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REPLY 



TO 



PROFESSOR TAYLER LEWIS' REVIEW OF 
REV. HENRY J. VAN DYKE'S SERMON 



ON 



BIBLICAL SLAYEM; 



ALSO, 



TO HIS ^TUER AETICLES ON THE SAME SUBJECT, 
PUBLISHED IN "THE WOELD." 



. BY 

J. HOLMES AGNEW. 




/ NEW YORK: 
D.'APPLETON AND COMPANY, 

443 & 445 BROADWAY. 
1861. 



Price :— Single copy, 10 cents ; 100 copies, $6 ; 500 copies, $25. 



7'7- 



y^n 



INTRODUCTION. 

The following pages were prepared for "The 
World," and wiitten successively as Professor Lewis' 
articles appeared. His treatise, liowever, was extended 
so far beyond a simple answer to Mr. Van Dyke, that, 
by the time he reached his conclusion, it was thought 
undesirable, then, to admit this reply into "The 
World's" columns. 

The "American Society for Promoting National 
Unity " having desired and unanimously recommended 
the issue in its present form, it is thus given to the 
public. It ^vill, probably, not reach all the readers of 
"The World," as was desirable, yet it is intended to 
give it as wide circulation as possible ; and it is hoped 
that those who have read Professor Lewis' series, wiU 
also read the Reply. 

It is an independent investigation, the Professor's 
articles and the Scriptures ha\dng been the basis ; and 
all the author asks is an unbiassed judgment on the 
argument. He thinks himself standing securely on the 
Bible ground. If not, he has no desire to stand at all. 

J. H. A. 

April Wtk, 18G1. 

Enteeed, according to Act of Congress, In tho ycnr ISGl, by D. Appleton & Compakt, In the 
Clerk's Ofllco of tho District Court for tho Southern District of New York. 



REPLY 



GOVERNMENT AND OWNERSHIP. 

" If ever the moral aspects of the slavery question are to 
be discussed in its roots," says Professor Lewis, " this would 
seem a proper time for such discussion. There is a right and 
a wrong somewhere in this matter, and we think they can be 
found." My object, in this review, will be to sift the argu- 
ment of Prof. Lewis, that the chaff, if any, may be blown off, 
and only the clean wheat of truth remain ; to be a pearl-diver, 
and, if in the shell there be a pearl, put it into the casket of 
Truth ; if only a shell, throw it away. It is best always to 
grant to an antagonist all that he may fairly claim, all that 
would strike a candid and unprejudiced mind as fairly his due ; 
and then, on the points, where you have the manifest advan- 
tage, ply him with energy. Whatever conclusion is reached, 
after a fair examination of the question, we mean to accept, 
without regard to North or South, Kepublican or Democrat. 
"We know that easy as to cut the air is it, to address readers 
thoroughly prepossessed with the sentiments you intend to advo- 
cate ; and hard, on the other hand, as to strike your hand on 
the edge of a Damascus blade, to utter opinions counter to 
those cherished by your hearers. We accept the office, how- 
ever, relying on the good judgment and the patience of our 
readers, to hear us through. "We shall arrive at a conclusion, 
which, it is thought, will commend itself to the conviction of 
the Christian church. 



4 GOVERNMENT AND OWNERSHIP. 

In tlie Professor's initial paragraph, there is too much of 
the inferential and of the ad captandum^ too little of the rigid 
exactitude of naked truth, too higli a laudation of tlie " sublim- 
ity of that great, conscientious vote of the iNorth," to which he, 
doubtless, contributed. It might, with propriety, be asked : 
Who have been " breaking up the Union, for the sake of " anti- 
slavery ? "Who is " giving ease to the consciences of those " 
who would violate compacts, speak evil of dignities, despise 
governments, and defy the powers that be ? "Who is " virtually 
justifying their proceedings ? " The Professor is doing these 
things quite as manifestly, to many minds, at least, if not to his 
own, as Mr. Yan Dyke, in his sermons, is sustaining the ex- 
tremists of the South. It may as well, also, be here premised, 
that Prof. Lewis and myself are, as I have presumed, of one 
mind in respect to the supreme authority of the Scriptures, as 
a standard of truth, and that we alike reject the fatal dogma, 
that human instinct or sentiment, or even conscience, is deter- 
minative of moral questions. Men must, indeed, obey con- 
science, for, if they do not, they do wrong {7'elati'vely) ; yet, in 
obeying conscience, they do not necessarily nor always do right, 
{absolutely) the rigid. 

Prof. Lewis first directs attention to a " fallacy to be found 
in most Northern productions similar to Mr. Yan Dyke's," i. e., 
the adoption of a 'Dia ^nedia, in which the writer avoids the 
" odiousness of the extremest ground of the extreme South," 
and yet palliates the Southern idea and action, and antagonizes 
the ^Northern. He " distrusts the maxim in medio Veritas,'''' and 
says " it is not scriptural." " Truth seldom is precisely in the 
middle." In reply to this, it may suffice to say that in medio, 
midway, was never intended by tlie author of the maxim, nor 
any one else who ever quoted it, to mean that the truth was 
^^ precisely ^'' in the middle, but somewhere off from the two 
extremes ; as we say of a ship at sea, " she was mid-ocean," 
not intimating that she was precisely half-way between the two 
coasts of Europe and America. And then, as to the maxim 
being " not scriptural," I must beg leave to differ from my 
learned friend. ISTot that it occurs verhatim in the Scriptures, 
but that it is of tlie s])irit of the Scriptures, and that the apos- 



GOVERNMENT AND OWNEESHIP. 5 

ties, especially Paul, the learned and the bold, acted it out. 
When a clearly-defined wrong was done, when an indisputable 
principle, known and read of all men, was at stake, none was 
more decided and denunciatory than he ; but when it was a 
question not involving a fixed and immutable principle, though 
of grave importance, he took the via media, the middle ground, 
and " became all things to all men." His letters abundantly 
illustrate this, and his reproof of Peter at Antioch confirms it. 
And what did the college of apostles at Jerusalem, in respect 
to a question of Gentile rights referred to them ? What but 
walk on the via media ? 

To prove the changes in the line of direction of the via 
media, and the tendency toward the extreme, it is afiirmed 
that " every new move of the stronger extremist has drawn 
the mediist after him ; " the direction, because of the corrup- 
tion of human nature, being downward, from moderatism to 
extremism. So, then, it follows that the " Republican party," 
which has, in the Professor's judgment, swallowed up the Aboli- 
tionists, as Aaron's serpents did those of the Egyptian magi- 
cians, must, after a while, evomit and be itself the eaten instead 
of the eater ; i. e., must, as mediists, succumb to the power of 
the extremists ; or else the dogma of the Professor is not true ; 
or else, if the contrary is the fact in the ISTorth, and the medi- 
ists have controlled the extremists, and reduced them to " a 
mere handful, without influence, without votes, and ever grow- 
ing smaller," then there is no reason why the same may not be 
true in the South, and the mediists there also (untrammelled, 
unagitated, undisturbed by the I^orth, and left to work out 
their own institutions under Providence) finally control and 
subdue the extremists. 

After these preliminaries, and before coming directly to his 
argument, the Professor concedes that, " as against the Aboli- 
tionists, Mr. Yan Dyke has borne himself right valiantly," 
and proved the " anti-biblical and infidel tendency " of their 
doctrine, because they attack slavery " on the ground of mere 
natural right." He also " concurs, at least exegetically, in Mr. 
Yan Dyke's view of 1 Tim. vi,, and other passages." Now it 
seems to us clear that, if Mr. Yan Dyke's argument is good as 



6 GOVEENMENT AND OWNEESHIP. 

against Abolitionists, in Prof. Lewis' judgment, he must mean 
either that it is good as against raids, personal liberty bills, in- 
citements to insurrection, etc., or as against the Abolitionism 
which Mr. Yan Djke himself set up and defined as consisting 
in the " belief that slaveholding is a sin, is onorally wrong.''^ 
" This is its characteristic doctrine and its strength," says the 
author of the sermon. If tlie latter, then Mr. Yan Dyke's 
argument is good against Prof. L. and all who sympathize with 
him in the sentiments of his reply. For, if that reply is an 
argument for any thing, it is assuredly an argument, or an at- 
tempt at one, for the moral wrong, the sin of slavery. And, 
moreover, it is apparent that Mr. Yan Dyke is contending, not 
against an Abolitionism which " attacks slavery on the ground 
of mere natural right," but against one which maintains the 
moral wrong, the sin of slavery, on the groimd of the Bible 
and of Christianity. Hence his appeal is to the Bible, in order 
to meet his antagonists just on their own ground, and to sweep 
from beneath them the very foundations on which they so tri- 
umphantly claim to stand. And precisely here is the essence, 
the strength, the vi7nis of that conscientious conviction of the 
wrong of slavery which permeates and contaminates the very 
vitals of a portion of the I^orthern church. Tlien, again, the 
argument of Mr. Yan Dyke on the infidel tendency of abolition 
is good against anti-slavery mediism even, which rejects bibli- 
cal evidence when it comes in conflict with human instincts, 
generally adventitious, educated feelings or sensibilities. And 
to us it seems there is rather a tendency toward this in the re- 
ply, if not in the author. The concession made to the soundness 
of Mr. Yan D.'s exegesis of 1 Tim. vi., is immediately qualified 
by the presumption that the Professor sees " an interior spirit 
in those texts," " an apostolic stand-point," " a changed condi- 
tion of the world," which render the exegesis, though abso- 
lutely true, " the letter that killeth, instead of the spirit that 
giveth life." Although cautioned that " it is vain to say that 
this is a mere transcendental fancy, by which the force of 
Scripture may be ever turned aside," we cannot avoid the fear 
that the Professor became involved in a nebular transcenden- 
talism, which, by some powerful rcflcctmg telescope of his own. 



GOVERNJIENT AND OWNERSHIP. 7 

might be resolved for bim into brilliant twinkling stars, and 
yet leave all ordinary observers the vision of nothing but a 
well-defined mass standing out boldly and clear to the percep- 
tion. There is, indeed, " the letter that killeth," and there is, 
also, "'the spirit that giveth " not life, but death ; death to 
truth, death to the Bible, death even to Christ. ]^ow, it is 
very manifest to every biblical scholar, and such Dr. Lewis 
confessedly is, that the passage in Tim., treating solely and 
simply of mutual duties arising from the relations of moral 
beings, is as wide asunder from any of those cases in which 
" inspiration itself warns us of danger," of the literal, or let- 
ter-interpretation, as heaven from earth. The " letter," the 
literal meaning here, is just what we want, what we must take. 
"We dare not go beyond it. It is the mutual duties of master 
and slave, in the plainest possible terms. 'No fancy, no 
" spirit," but just what the apostle says. One might imagine 
that old Origen himself had become transmigrated and em- 
bodied in the humanity that would be delving just here for an 
underlying, invisible " spirit." 

"We are glad, now, to reach the scriptural argument j)roper. 
On the part of Professor Lewis, it lies in the distinction be- 
tween lordsM]) and ownersMjp, or government and property^ 
and in the fact that the latter characterizes Southern Slavery, 
while the former was the peculiarity of the patriarchal and 
Homeric. 

The argument from the O. T. is pronounced " utterly worth- 
less, even as against the Abolitionist," because the slavery 
which awakens his antagonism is so essentially, so monstrously 
different from what is called slavery in the O. T., that no fair 
comparison can be made. Though it should be proven, is the 
intimation, that slavery existed and was recognized under the 
patriarchal and Mosaic dispensations, it would be no justifica- 
tion of American slavery. Tlie latter is then portrayed as con- 
sisting predominantly in the idea of property^ and that idea 
realized in the perpetration of all manner of crimes ; in the 
" crushing out of humanity," " the outcasting from the State," 
" the reduction of a -person to a ihing^ a chattel, an animated 
tool. The former as a servitude, whose predominant idea was 



8 govi:knment and owneeshtp. 

government merely, and that idea realized in exclusion of caste, 
no-sale, kindness, sympathy, familiarity of social life, illus- 
trated by tlie_relation between Abraham and his slave Eliezer. 
Then is it trimnphantly asked : " Have we elevated the idea 
of servitude ? " " Have we been improving it ? " " Then 
may we quote the patriarchs." We have next, consecutively, 
the following statements and propositions : " both ideas, lord- 
ship and ownership, enter into slavery," and " the predomi- 
nance of the one over the other determines its character." 
" The claim of power, even when wrongful, is perfectly con- 
sistent with human dignity." Power, the most despotic, is not 
degrading, though it drive its subject, against his will, to be 
murdered " at the cannon's mouth," and to leave behind him 
a lone widow and helpless children in abject poverty. " To be 
owned is degrading." " To be property, and nothing more, is 
dehumanizing, both to owner and owned." 

The gist of Dr. Lewis' reply is just here ; and yet, in these 
statements, and the stirring appeals growing out of them, we 
seem to find fallacy, unfairness, assumption, and assertion. 
In eloquent utterings the Professor dwells, at length, on the 
degradation, the dehumanization, the every thing that is ab- 
horrent both to Christ and humanity, which are involved in 
the idea of ownership, and that the essence, the characteristic 
of American Slavery. Humanity shrinks from the idea of 
property in man. Jesus feels it, Christianity abhors it, as 
" brutalizing the race." All this is eloquent, touching, tender. 
Yet we are here chiefly to reason and to expound ; and the 
main question is. Are these things so ? 

Is ownership of a fellow-man degrading ? Is this a univer- 
sal idea ? Does it belong to the race ? History says not ; but 
the opposite. All ages, all the families of man, have recog- 
nized the idea of ownership without blushing, have practised 
on it without the feeling of degradation. And how is it at the 
South ? How, with the man and woman there, accustomed 
from infancy to the idea, as familiar with it as with that of the 
parental relation ? Do they shrink back appalled at the idea ? 
Have they any such experiences, any such gefuehl, as the Ger- 
mans would say, in connection with this idea, as harrow up 



GOVERNMENT AND OWNERSHIP. 9 

the very soul of Dr. Lewis ? Yerily, no. Then, has Dr. Lewis 
any right to claim it as an universal idea ; any right to en- 
wrap it with his own notions and sentiments, and then insist 
that, just in that form, it must be realized in every soul ? 
"Where, in the history of humanity or in the Word of God, do 
we find these distinctions so dogmatically insisted on as moral 
axioms ? And how do we know, as he asserts, that the patri- 
archs never " sold a slave? " Because it is not recorded of any 
one, sooth the Professor. On this principle of interpretation 
we should allow much not allowed, and disallow much that is 
allowed. There is a manifest reason why the buyer is spoken 
of rather than the seller : but, beside this, if one bought, (and 
this is granted,) another must have sold : nor is it very appar- 
ent how an Hebrew could buy an Hebrew, unless an Hebrew 
sold him to him. But see Gen. xxxvii., 28 ; xvii., 13, 27 ; Exod. 
xii., 44 ; Lev. xxv., 39 ; Dent, xv., 12. Li these and other 
passages, selling of men is distinctly stated or clearly implied. 
The Professor is also mistaken in asserting that slaves are " never 
mentioned in the 0. T., as property, never reckoned along with 
the flocks and the herds." See Gen. xii., 15, 16 ; xx., 14 ; 
xxiv., 35 ; xxvi., 14 ; xxxii., 5, etc. Li all these passages slaves 
are reckoned along with flocks and herds, " Sheep and oxen, 
and male slaves and female slaves." " Flocks and herds, and 
silver and gold, and male slaves and female slaves, and camels 
and asses." " Oxen and asses and flocks, and male slaves and 
female slaves." 

It is clear as day that the idea of property did attach to the 
patriarchal, biblical slavery ; to that of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob 
and Moses. And that it was not the predominant idea, or that 
the other, government, was, is inferentially asserted rather than 
proved. Moreover, if the idea of property, of ownership was 
in it at all, as it must have been according to the Professor, 
being an idea necessary to slavery, then there was not prob- 
ably at that time, nor is there to be now, ascribed to it that 
" degradation, that dehumanization, that brutalization," which, 
in the Professor's mind, are its germ and its casement, its all 
in all : then the patriarchs and the prophets probably did not 
feel themselves degraded lij the relation, nor in it. 



10 GOVERNMENT AND OWNEESHIP. 

Why, again, is it necessaiy to show that " the Texan slave- 
holder " has " improved^'' the social status of the slave, and ad- 
vanced hun beyond that of the patriarchal, in order to quote 
the latter in justification of the former? Appeal is made to 
slavery under the O. T. simply to prove that the relation of 
master and slave existed, was recognized and regulated by law, 
not that the same system 'prevailed^ the same legal or adventi- 
tious circumstances accompanied it. And if the idea of owner- 
ship^ or property in man is found there, then it is fair to 
quote O. T. slavery in justification of modern slavery per se^ 
although ownership be its basis. Its evils are extraneous, ad- 
ventitious, growing out of the corrupt passions of man. Its 
blessings, too, may be great ; are great, in very many instances. 
It were easy to select, in the South, many an Eliezer, many a 
slave as faithful as Ulysses', and receiving as much of the con- 
fidence and respect of his master. "We could tell tales of 
familiar social life there, between master and slave, that would 
put to the blush the man, who talks loudly of freedom, equal- 
ity, manhood, lordship, and yet subjects to a deeper degrada- 
tion the Irish servant, or the colored freeman, who does the 
menial service of the house, under an exclusion from the family- 
life, from the family board, under a caste of separation and 
exclusiveness, embittered with wormwood and gall. And does 
the classic Professor forget what Hector said to his wife, on 
parting for the war, and what a slavery was implied in it, in 
that early Grecian period, that Homeric age ? And sad to say, 
even the favorite slave of Ulysses, in his absence, had bought 
and owned a slave himself. We are ready, also, to contend, 
and to prove, that in the Southern slavery the idea of govern- 
ment " is the predominant one, and not that of ownership or 
mere property. 

And why is " subjection to power, however despotic, not 
degrading," but to be owned necessarily so ? It is easy, per- 
haps, to throw a halo of " glory " around the idea of power, 
however dictatorial and tyrannical, and under it the man may 
march to the cannon's mouth : and yet many a poor creature 
under the conscription of a despot, torn from wife, children, 
home, and driven to the field of carnasre and of death, would 



GOVEKlSraiENT AKD OWNEESHIP. H 

gladly forego all " the gloiy " of the idea, for the quiet com- 
fort of being owned and cared for, in health and sickness, in 
manhood and age. " All that a man hath will he give for his 
life," even liberty. Tes, life without liberty, is estimated more 
highly, and that by a divinely-implanted instinct, than the name 
of liberty with compulsory exposure to death at the cannon's 
mouth. Nor is this degrading. Freedom is not the highest 
happiness^ nor the greatest Messing. I could own a fellow- 
man, for his good, and neither feel that I was degrading my- 
self, nor him. In this dej^artment of the " Reply," there is too 
much of the '■'■ petitio jyrincijni^^'' too much taken for granted. 
Besides, slavery is but " subjection to power," even where 
property is the chief element of the power. It is a power, too, 
regulated by law, which reaches and binds both master an"d 
slave. And, though in the abstract, power may not be degrad- 
ing, yet, in its exercise, it may be monstrously so, both to the 
potentate and his subject, as in the Emperor Nero. So the ab- 
straction of ownership, the mere relation thus expressed, may 
be not at all dehumanizing, whilst the exercise of it, the action 
imder it, may be so in the extreme. And, indeed, further on, 
in his first article, to which we are now confined, the Professor 
concedes the essence of the argument, when he afiirms that, 
" it is not the mere presence, but the predominance of the idea 
of property, which gives its chief moral character to slavery." 
If, then, the mere presence of the property-idea., or of owner- 
ship, gives no moral character to the relation, property or own- 
ership may exist, and there yet be no bad moral character, no 
sin in it : and if so, then it may not be, it is not degrading. 
But strano-e is it that the Professor should have become so 
etherealized by his idea of the dignity of power, as to have 
forgotten the lessons of history, both ancient and modern. All 
the worst concomitants of modern slavery, which he denounces 
as the worst the world ever knew, are nothing in comparison 
with the horrid inflictions of inquisitorial and other powers 
on their subjects. Even the power of abused capital, and es- 
pecially of legislation by aristocratic and oligarchic wealth, 
is incomparably more grinding and debasing to its abjects, 
than the severest lashes ever laid on the back of the poor 



12 GOVEENMENT AND OWNEKSHIP. 

slave, or the bitterest deprivations and exactions to whicli lie 
is ever subjected. 

And now, as to the charge laid against Southern Christians 
of an " uneasy conscience," quieted only by the opiate of great 
blessings to the negro, or by the bitter drug of " throwing the 
slave from the pale of humanity," and trying to believe him but 
semi-human, and thus landing in infidelity, it is simply harsh 
and unfair. It grows, psychologically, out of the transfusion 
of his own climatic and adventitious feelings into the bosoms 
of his Southern fellow-christians. He, in like outward circum- 
stances, retaining his own interior views, would have an uneasy 
conscience, therefore, they must. Tliere might, possibly, be 
more of the " easy conscience " in gliding smoothly along in 
Northern seas, tideless and stormless ; in walking with the 
multitude, in augmenting the majesty of that " sublime vote," 
and shouting hosannas with the triumphant, numberless throng ! 
There may, too, be quite a strong " tendency to infidelity " in 
exalting natural instincts above the Bible, or letting them have 
free play, without the restraint of revealed truth. 

In all this preliminary and foundation-argument, we think 
our learned friend has erred, in connecting indissolubly with his 
idea of ownership, all the very worst evils of the slave-system, 
the flagrant wrongs and barbarities often perpetrated by the 
godless overseer and the inhuman slave-driver. But the abuse 
of a thing is no valid argument against its use. The human 
body is often prostituted and debased by its owner, and 
even to have one at all may be a degradation in the view of 
angels, yet none of us would exactly like to be without one, in 
this life, nor can we, because of its abuse, abate or despise its 
use, or its propriety. 

We think, too, that the Professor has been somewhat car- 
ried away by his inwrought feeling about property in man, 
wrought up to the predominance of sentiment and passion, not 
in the bad sense, or he would have scanned more closely many 
of his epithets and phrases. In describing Southern slavery as 
" the outcasting from the State," it were well for us to remem- 
ber how utterly an outcast, in this regard, as well as socially, is 
\\\(ifree negro of the North. In descanting so impassionedly 



GOVEENMENT AKD OWNEESHIP. 13 

on " the crushing out of the human brotherhood any whose 
nature Christ has assumed," it was forgotten that this can have 
no logical force, because it applies neither to the immense mass 
of Southern Christians who do not entertain, yea revolt at the 
idea, nor to those sciolists, who do, for they would deny that 
Christ did assume that semi-homo, or homo-animal nature. 
Then, again, when it is said that the slaveholder " if a ruler, 
in distinction from an owner, must be a ruler of brutes, of seem- 
ing men, of a half-humanity, brutalized in appearance, though 
looking like us," who does not see and feel the extravagance 
of the declarations ! Why, instead of being brutalized in ap- 
pearance, the slave, under the slave system, has been lifted 
up immensely in his humanity, both spiritually and bodily. 
Compare him with his kin, fresh from the bogs or deserts of 
Africa ; with the cargo of the ship " Wanderer," with the native 
Congo or the negro of Guinea ! 

But our amazement is extreme as we read : " It is said 
*Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's manservant,' and the 
text is often quoted to prove the scriptural lawfulness of the 
modern human bondage ; but so it is also said, ' Thou shalt not 
covet thy neighbor's wife.' The argument is as good in the 
one case as in the other." That is, if it prove ownership right, 
as to slave, so also as to wife. And does it not prove it ? Is 
it not a manifest recognition, by the Divine Lawgiver, of the 
rectitude of the relation, the right of owner ship in the master ? 
If not, how could there be sin in the coveting f And if no sin 
in coveting, how could it be so emphatically, so j)ositively, for- 
bidden ? If the neighbor, the holder of the slave, had no right 
to him, then was there no lorong in the coveting of him. But 
God pronounces it wrong, absolutely forbids it, and thus, by 
necessary implication, justifies the relation. "We acknowledge, 
also, that the argument is just " as good " in the other case 
quoted, the coveting of a neighbor's wife. Why not ? And 
what objection is there to it ? None whatever. The prohibi- 
tion here also proclaims the rectitude of the relation, whether 
you call it ownership or not, sustained by the husband to the 
wife, making the coveting, in this case, just as wrong as in the 
other, and no more so. The husband had the right to his wife, 



14 GOVEEIOIENT AND OWNERSHIP. 

as the master to liis slave, aud to covet the one or the other was 
equally wrong. ]^or does the fact, that the prohibition is the 
same in the two cases, prove that ownership was the relation 
in both, at least in the same sense, but it does equally justify 
both relations, and pronounce coveting in both equally sinful. 
iN^either slave nor wife, each in his own relation, could be 
coveted, and therefore either could be rightly held. But 
should it be said that the relation implied in the terms " man- 
servant and maidservant," is not ownership but lordship ; and 
that the prohibition, therefore, justifies no other than such re- 
lation, in any state of slavery, I reply, that this is assertion 
without proof ; and I assert, on the contrary, that the idea of 
ownership is the idea of the relation here expressed by those 
terms, and I prove it by appeal to the Professor's own decla- 
ration that this idea is necessarily in slavery, but more especially 
by collation of the legal documents and historical writings of 
the people to whom the Law was given. 

And again, if it be said that the prohibition does not imply 
right in the possessor in the thing possessed, but forbids the 
coveting as well where the thing coveted is wrongfully held, 
our reply is that this notion grows out of confounding desire 
with coveting, the latter implying, in any divine enactment, 
that the thing coveted belongs to another, is his hy right, 
moral or legal, or both. Does not coveting, also, as a legal 
term, imply that you would have a right to possess the thing, 
if not owned by another. In other words, does it not apply 
only to things lawful, things you might rightly possess, as a 
wife, in distinction from a mistress. This is, perhaps, a new 
view of the law. We think it the logical and legal intei'preta- 
tion, and would commend it to those capable of judging. 

It is not the common idea of the Law, that its language, 
" whatever is thy neighbor's," implies property in the preced- 
ing objects specified, but this, that the prohihition itself, the 
term employed, of necessity implies property and the I'ight of 
holding. 

We have extended our argument somewhat on the first 
article of the Professor, which we think his chief and his 
strongest ; but we hope not to weary the patience of our read- 



OLD TESTAMENT SLAVERY. 15 

ers, in the future discussion. It is a subject of deejj interest, 
and should be well weighed by thinking minds, both North 
and South. " Too long has the appeal been made to every 
thing else but truth." 

AEGUMENT FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

Having proved, as we think, the existence and divine re- 
cognition of slavery under the Old Testament Dispensations, 
and that property or ownership was a coexistent, if not pre- 
dominant idea in that slavery, that buying and selling belonged 
to it ; having disrobed the idea of property in man of that 
garb of degradation with which the Professor had invested it, 
and exposed his distinctions between ownership and power, 
as rather fancy than fact ; having shown that the ideas and ac- 
tualities of Jewish slavery were such as to be a proper basis 
of comparison between that and modern slavery, and having 
given our interpretation of the Moral Law on this point, it is 
intended, in this number, to review the Professor's argument 
on Lev. xxv., 44^6. " Both thy bondmen and bondmaids 
which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round 
about you. Of them may ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. 
Moreover of the children of strangers that do sojourn among 
you ; of them may ye buy, and of their families that are with 
you, which they beget in your land, and they shall be yom- 
possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your 
children after you, to inherit them as a possession ; they shall 
be your bondmen forever." Tliis passage proves : 1. Permis- 
sion to hold slaves, not hired servants, for the Professor well 
knows the distinction between the two Hebrew words ; 2. To 
luy them, and that with money, not ransom ; for this would 
not apply to the second class, those " begotten in their land ; " 
3. To buy of the heathen round about ; 4. Of sojourners and 
their families ; 5. They should be owned, be property ; 6. Be 
property for life, just that and no less does the word /br^^-y^r 
mean, unless it may indicate that they and their offspring in 
successive generations forever, shall be the possession of the 
family ; 1. To be bequeathed, in the same relation, as slaves, to 
2 



16 OLD TESTAMENT SLAVERY. 

children. Their " children after them were to inherit them as 
a possession.^'' If the possession of the parents was that of 
owjiersJiip obtained by purchase, then was the right and title 
in the children the same. 

It is conceded by Mr. Van Dyke, and the Professor inti- 
mates it to be clear, that " what is said of the enslavement of a 
Jew by a Jew cannot be applied to modern slavery, because, 
in the former, provision was made for redemption, liberation 
after a time. This is the universal view, we believe. But is 
it correct ? Why is not the argument as good in its essence, 
from the law relating to the bondage of Hebrews, as from the 
passage now under consideration ? Although it differs from 
the modern bondage and from that of Lev. xxv., 44-46, in 
the provision for a limitation of time and a redemption, there 
is given a special reason for that limitation, to wit, that the 
Hebrews themselves had been, as a people, already long in 
bondage. But beside this, in that very bondage or slavery, 
there is the same idea of property, of purchase and ownership, 
as in the other. The time of possession is limited, but the 
title, the right, the relation, for that time, is the same. It 
would, therefore, be fair and logical to reason, as well from 
this as the other slavery of the ' heathen round about,' that the 
divine law recognized slavery in the relation of ownership, 
slavery per se. Then, if so, that relation in the modern sla- 
very cannot be wrong ^er ««." 

"Without conceding, therefore, to Prof. Lewis or Mr. Yan 
Dyke, what we laiow is universally conceded, that no argu- 
ment for modern slavery can be based on the law regulating 
the bondage of a Jew, let us proceed to examine the Profes- 
sor's reasoning on the passage quoted above. He denies any 
force in the argument founded on this passage, in justification 
of slavery ijer se, and offers two answers. One " greatly 
weakens" the argument, and the other "renders it utterly 
worthless." Tlie diluting answer of the Professor consists in 
the fact, as lie represents it, of an utter want of resemblance 
between the two slaveries, the Jewish and the American. 
The points of contrast are found in the differences between 
the two peoples, and in the mercantile feature of the modern 



OLD TESTAMENT SLAVEET. 17 

slavery ; tlie vendibility of tlie slave not attaching to the 
Jewish. 

Since truth is our sole object, and fair interpretation or pur- 
pose, we feel compelled here to differ with Dr. Lewis, and to 
dilute somewhat his own argument. When he denominates 
the Jews an " agricultural, untrafficking theocracy," and the 
South " commercial, cotton-growing States ; " he seems to us 
utterly to fail in making out a striking contrast. The Hebrews 
"agricultural;" the Southern States " cotton-growing," i.e., 
agricultural. Tlie Hebrews " untrafficking," Southern States 
"commercial," the latter attribute scarcely belonging more 
to the one than to the other ; the former not specially charac- 
teristic of the Hebrews, their traffic having been, by no means, 
restricted for those days, as even the biblical history proves. 
But the burden of the Professor's first answer consists in his 
denial of vendibility to the Jewish slavery, and his reasoning 
on the question of God's permission of sin. In order to get rid 
of the language of the law, " ye may 5wy," and to remove 
even a " seeming resemblance," he tells us, what he presumes 
every body knows, that huying, in such cases, meant the " pay- 
ment of ransom," " sometimes the ransom of life." Alas ! for 
the interpretation of our scholarly professor. If the word did 
mean to ransom., incase of captives in war, it did also mean to 
huy with money. "What ! " huy in such cases," i. e., in this 
case, in this law, means paying a ransom ! Let us so translate : 
" Of them (the heathen) may ye pay ransom for bondmen. 
Moreover, of the children of strangers that do sojourn among 
you, and of their families, which they beget in your land, for 
them ye maj pay ransom.^^ No reference here to captives ran- 
somed from death by substituting a life-slavery. Evidently sim- 
ple trade, traffic. Children born in the land, too, could be hought 
into perpetual slavery, transmissible to posterity. Does h^iy, in 
this case, mean to pay ransom ? "Wliat ransom, and for what ? 

Having thus attempted to remove all possibility of com- 
parison between the Jewish and Southern slavery as founded 
on this Levitical law, by denying the usage of language, and 
astounding both the common sense and the learning of his 
readers, he reverts to the old idea, argued at length in his first 



18 OLD TESTAJIENT SLAVERY. 

article, that altliougli " permitted to buy, there is not a word 
of selling,^'' " no reckoning of them as property with corn, wine, 
herds, flocks." The false assmnption on both these points, has 
already been fully met by quotations from the Scriptures, and 
need not be repeated. The Professor might well be here called 
on for proof of his oft-repeated assertions, when he so fre- 
quently demands evidence of Mr, Yan D.'s statements. That 
there is too much of mere vendibility attached to the slave by 
many in the South, might be conceded, and yet that this idea 
did not attach to the Hebrew's slave, and that it was never 
abused by the wicked, our author has utterly failed to prove. 
The Professor should know that there was a slave-maH among 
the Jews. Yet, we are obliged to discover that, even in this argu- 
ment on the absence of the mercantile in the Jewish slavery, its 
presence is inadvertently confessed. " There are intimations in 
the Jewish history that it was, at certain times, more merce- 
nary. Then we hear the thunderings of the prophets, as in Isa. 
Iviii., Y, ' Loose ye wicked bonds, unbind the servile knots, set 
free the oppressed, Ireah asunder every yoke.^ " If, at times, 
more mercenary, then, at all times, positively mercenary. This 
is precisely as we contend and prove. And, moreover, we 
think the " then thunderings of the iDrophets," when more 
mercenary, leaves us clearly to infer that the mere mercenary 
idea itself was not an object of the prophet's denunciation, un- 
less the Professor will here retract his own affirmation, and fall 
back on the extremest literal interpretation, making the thun- 
derings apply to the relation itself, to simple slavery fer se. 
But it is not possible for him here to accept the literal inter- 
pretation. He would not stake his scholarship on it ; for just 
here, in prophetic, excited denunciations, is the place for figu- 
rative expressions, for the " spirit, the interior view." 

But now the Professor is obliged to meet a shai-p question 
of some objector, to wit: "Is it consistent that God should 
give a permission, and then rebuke men so sweepingly for tak- 
ing the benefit of it ? " and his reply is : " God docs permit 
what he rebukes men for doing. He permitted Balaam to go 
to Balak, and then sharply rebuked him for going." But to 
reconcile the discord in this passage, we are told that " God 



OLD TESTAMEl^ SLAVERY. 19 

gave Mm permission to go that lie might hless, but Balaam 
went to curse, and so God rebuked him, because he "went to 
^uTse?'' The case does not prove his proposition that God per- 
mits what, jtijet what, he rebukes men for doing. He per- 
mitted the going, rebuked the cursing. The "imreasoning 
beast " might here arise, if there "were for him a resurrection, and 
pronounce, in the presence of our learned Professor, his o"wn 
words : " ' God is wiser than men,' says Mr. Van Dyke, where 
he would rebuke the Abolitionists. "We have no thought at all 
of disputing the truth of that proposition, but might think it 
capable of some application to others, who assume so boldly 
to be the exclusive defenders of Deity." 

But the permission given in the passage of Lev. xxv., which, 
according to the Professor, was to imy ransoTn for captives, we 
are further taught, was a merciful permission, growing out of 
the " spirit of the times." The spirit of the times justifying 
God in permitting, in allowing and regulating, by statutory 
enactment, slavery ^^r se ; the buying of men and women into 
bondage to be a possession and an inheritance forever ! If this 
was sin in itself in the sight of God, we see not how God could 
thus enact, maugre the argument on Balaam and the ass. We 
think as little of the assertions about " slave hunts in Moab," 
and " Solomon's never thinking of bringing home, from Ophir, 
human chattels along with his gold dust, asses, and ivory." 
Perhaps he needed none just then : perhaps he was not accus- 
tomed to go just in that direction for such articles, whilst that 
was the place for the traffic in gold dust, asses, and ivory." 

"We confess to a dulness of perception which does not see 
the force nor propriety of the argument on the fugitive slave 
law of Dent, xxiii., 15, 16, The newly adopted view of the 
Professor applies it equally to all slaves, whether of Hebrew or 
of foreign origin, vrhilst generally it is limited, in construction, 
to the latter. Our objection to the Professor's interpretation 
lies chiefly in the fact, that it seems a necessity of scholarship 
and of the usage of language, to interpret the pronouns, thou, 
thee, in this case, as generic, not specific, as meaning the nation 
as a body politic, a people and thus including each individual. 
•Consequently it is in contrast with the " heathen around about," 



20 OLD TESTAMENT SLAVEEY. 

and lias no application to an Hebrew slave. Tliis view is con- 
firmed by the usus loquendi of the entire chapter and of almost 
the entire book, and indisputably by the 16tli verse itself. " He 
shall dwell with thee, among you, (the people,) in the place of 
his choice, in one of thy gates. Thou slialt not oppress him." 
In one of thy gates, cannot mean a gate of a particular man or 
family, but a locality in one of the tribes. Besides, the render- 
ing is utterly inconsistent with j)rineiples of legal construction. 
No clause of a general statute can be so rendered as to mar the 
consistency of the whole. And there would be a most mani- 
fest inconsistency in the enactment of authority to buy slaves 
of the heathen, with a perfect license to the slave to escape 
from his Hebrew master and an absolute prohibition of his 
surrender. Believe it, who can ! E^ot I. It is a contempt on 
Deity. 

The Professor is lame, also, here in his " strict construc- 
tion " of the lawyers, when he says that, " had the words 
escaped unto thee from his master, meant y/'c»w^ the heathen^'' 
the language would have been general and collective ; " who 
shall have escaped from any of the nations round ahout theeP 
!N"ow, we humbly think not, because whilst the usage of speech, 
and the very law itself necessarily point to the foreign fugitive, 
the equally necessary implication is, that he had a master 
there, not that he was an immigrant from Moab or Idumea. 
Consequently the law would specify that fact, and exonerate the 
Jew from whatever right or claim there might be in the heathen 
master. 

The Professor winds up this first answer to the argument 
founded on Levit. xxv., by the insinuation that " the permitted 
bondage " was " a statute not good," Ezek. xx., 25 — " for the 
Israelites," and that the liberation of a slave was regarded by 
" the early Christian church as a good work." In reply to the 
former, it is only needful to read Ezek. xx., especially vs. 10, 
11, 33, seq., to satisfy one's self that the " statute not good " had 
no sort of reference to the slave-code, but that, on the contrary, 
it was one of those described in vs. 10, 11, as good and now dis- 
obeyed, although special reference is had to idolatry and Sab- 
bath-breaking. In regard to the latter, it is ah extra, it be- 



OLD TESTAMENT SLAVERY. 21 

longs not to the point at issue. If the proof were adduced, it 
could be fully met. We shall here and now simply assert, 
that, in the " early Christian church," during the first three 
centuries, the liberation of a slave^ in itself considered, was not 
pronounced a " good work," the liberation of captives from the 
chains of barbarians was ; nor was the idea of proj^erty in man 
discarded as abhorrent, but the right even of a wicked, heathen 
master was recognized, and on the baptism of his slave, the 
obedience of the latter to the former was rigidly enjoined, 
whilst the testimony of the Christian master to the obedience 
and good behavior of his slave was requisite to his admission 
to baptism. 

The second answer of Dr. Lewis to the reasoning and con- 
clusion based on this passage of Leviticus, is this, that mider 
the Christian dispensation there has ceased to be any " heathen 
round about," that the word was " the antithesis of Jew, not of 
Christian." Consequently, if no heathen now, authority given 
the Jews to buy slaves of the heathen, cannot be plead in justi- 
fication of any slavery under the present disjoensation. This 
reply, he thinks, " utterly sweeps away this stronghold of the 
pro-slavery cause," and he calls on any one to detect a fallacy 
in it. With due deference to the Professor's reasoning power, 
which, however, we think a little diluted with water-colors, we 
shall assail the argument very briefly. 

The Jewish was a " nation kept apart," " a people by it- 
self," " the type of the better humanity to come." " Hence a 
Jew was nearer to a Jew than to any other race." ^' He was 
allowed to hold bondmen from the heathen." " Who are 
heathen now ? is the vital question." ^' The wall of partition 
has been broken down." " In Christ all are one — all free — 
free spiritually, free from all that degrades, free from owner- 
ship." " As, anciently, Israelite to Israelite, so, in the ' new 
covenant' with humanity, is every man to every man." " All 
are brethren now," In all this, there is a deep truth, but a 
shading thrown upon it, which makes it look like a difterent 
thing from the reality. It might be replied to two of the 
above statements, that as " Jew was more to Jew than to any 
other race," so is American to American ; and as the nation 



22 OLD TESTAMENT SLAVEKY. 

was a " type of tlie better humanity," and possessed slayery, 
tliat might also exist under the antitype, the higher humanity. 
But the general rej)ly to the general and pervading tenor of 
the above quotations, is, that they much mistake the precise 
idea of the relation between the Jew and the heathen in the 
passages referred to, and of that between the church and the 
world of the present day. The wall of partition between Jew 
and Gentile was indeed broken down in Christ. But was it, 
at all, in the sense indicated by Prof. Lewis' comments ? If 
the Apostle meant, by this, any thing more than that Christ, 
by his life and death, broke up that dispensation which had 
limited the blessings of the true religion to one people, and 
excluded the Gentile world, and secured the future dispensation 
of the gospel to the latter as well as the former, to all, then it 
seems to us he failed to make his meaning clear. In Christ 
Jesus all are indeed one ; all are, indeed, free. But how ? 
Does this- signify that the whole Gentile world has become 
Christian, is possessed of the blessings which are proffered to 
faith in Christ ? Or does it simply mean that there is no longer 
a " peculiar people," " to whom pertaineth the adoption, and 
the glory, and the covenants, and the service of God, and the 
promises ? " Can it, does it mean, that what Jew was to Jew 
anciently, joint participant in peculiar privileges in fact, every 
man is now to every man, joint partaker of his proffered mer- 
cy ? Are all, indeed,, one m Christ, or only they who are one 
in him by faith ? Are all " spiritually free," in any sense other 
than this, that all peoples are alike entitled to the blessings of 
the new covenant I Certainly not in the sense of being in 
Christ by faith ; assui-edly not in the sense of Christ's own 
declaration : " if the Son shall make you free, then shall ye be 
free indeed." And can the Professor show us, in the bond or 
in the " spirit " of it, that Christ's freedom includes, as he says, 
freedom from owiiiershtp or bondage ? And when he des-cants 
eloquently on the " dogma of the life or blood unity of the race " 
as kindred to that of the incarnation, does he mean to say that 
the dogma is peculiar to the new covenant ? Does not that 
very dogma find its basis in the very first chapter of the Bible, 
and run equally through every page of the Old as of the 



OLD TESTAJVIEISTT SLAVEKY. 23 

Kew Testament ? But aside from all tliis general reasoning or 
interpretation, do we not " detect a fallacy " in the very state- 
ment of his main proposition : " The Jew was allowed to hold 
bondmen from the heathen " ? To warrant his reasoning and 
justify his conclusion, it should have inserted the little word 
only after " heathen^ For in answering his vital question : 
" who ai'e the heathen ? " he comes to the deduction that now 
there are no heathen, in the then sense of the word, and hence 
the conclusion, that there can be no authority from that law 
for human bondage. Thus is " utterly swept away this strong- 
hold." But since the premise fails to be true, the conclusion 
falls with it. The logic is thus : Ye shall buy of the heathen. 
There are now no heathen. Tlierefore, you cannot now buy at 
all. But suppose we put the case truthfully thus : Ye may 
buy of your hretJiren^ also, for a limited time. Africans are your 
brethren. Therefore ye may buy of them limitedly. All we 
mean to say here is that oionersMp is equally recognized in both 
sjjecies of slavery, that of heathen and of brethren, and there- 
fore, should the Professor even be successful in sweeping away 
the stronghold, by his denial of the applicability of that law, 
because of the present non-existence of any heathen correspond- 
ent to those designated in the statute, the argument from the 
Mosaic statutes would not fail. Appeal could still be success- 
fully made to the law allowing the slavery of a brother Jew, 
in the relation of oionersMp^ and thus justifying what, in the 
Professor's view, is the distinctive and damning characteristic 
of the modem slavery. For if ownership could exist, under 
certain circumstances, for seven years, it could under others, for 
life. And if, for a few years not degrading, then not at all. 

But we find another fallacy, in the statement, that " Israel 
was tlie type of the better humanity." Is it not rather the 
type of " the spiritual Israel," " the body of Christ," his church 
universal ? Or rather is it any type at all, in the proper sense 
of the word ? Bead more from the Professor : " Of your fel- 
low-men ye shall not make slaves. Ye may rule them, sternly, 
if necessary, but ye may not oion them." " Tliis is a smpcr se." 
" The church is for all nations. We have all one home, one 
brotherhood, as well as one Saviour." All this is well, properly 



24 OLD TESTAIMEIST SLAVEEY. 

understood : but our metaphysics does not j)ermit us to see 
what more relation it has to the question of slavery, even own- 
ershij), than to an hundred other things. If this glorious truth 
of the unity of the race m Christ, the breaking down of the 
wall of partition, the oneness of the home, of the brotherhood, 
of the Saviour for all nations, is to be thus plead against human 
bondage ; in the same spirit and with the same propriety, may 
it be plead against all social wrongs, against all distinctions, and 
launch us on the dark sea of socialism. These things, these 
biblical expressions, are not to be thus interpreted. No law of 
interpretation will justify it. 

And yet again, what biblical exposition follows. " Te can- 
not plead any more the language of the old law : ' they shall 
be your possession, to make bondmen of the nations round 
about you. God has given them to Christ — ' the heathen for 
a possession.'' " Eight on the basis of this, there follows a * 
warm appeal to the Christian world to go out and take posses- 
sion of the nations, in the name of Christ, ^'us-i ichere they are, 
to which we add a hearty Amen. Yet, this seems to us very 
little, and certainly not directly, to the point : and the idea 
attached to Christ's ^oss^mo^z- of the heathen is amazingly new 
and strange. It is this : God has given the heathen, i. e., all 
the Gentile world, to Christ for a possession, therefore no man 
can possess or own another in the relation of slavery. The 
possession of Christ is now substituted for the possession under 
the Levitical law. Can it be possible that the Professor has 
overlooked the fact that he uses the word possession in two 
different senses? It cannot be that he so interprets that 
prophetic gift of the heathen to Christ as to mean any thing 
more, any thing else than that they shall all finally come to the 
knowledge of Ilim as the Eedeemer, shall be imbued with the 
sj)irit of his gospel and become members of his kingdom of 
righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. Any other 
interpretation, and especially such as the Professor intimates, 
would lead to monstrosities in hermencutics. But then, such 
possession, such as was manifestly contemplated by the Spirit 
and the prophet, lies entirely outside of the question of human 
bondage, utterly l)eyond all the merely governmental and social 



OLD TESTAJIENT SLAVERY. 25 

relations of life. It rather regards and permeates tliem all, 
" rendering to Coesar tlie things that are Caesar's," but not 
rudely laying its hand on tlie established order of govern- 
ments. A man may be a slave and yet be the possession of 
Jesus in the very highest sense preconceived by the prophet ; 
and even in the clanking chains of o^vnership, and by means 
of it, have tens of thousands become the freemen, the possession 
of Christ, the one ownership not interfering with the other, 
yea, co-existing with it. And it may not be anticipating to 
say, just here, that these very Gentiles, these " sons of Adam, 
brethren redeemed by Christ," were the slaves of the times of 
Christ and his Apostles. And assuredly all that is so glowingly 
said about telling " the African that Christ has hought liim^'' has 
no direct application to the subject in hand ; nor all the rhet- 
oric about telling him the story of the cross, where he is ; nor 
that about " climatic nationalities : " for the poor manacled 
slave of the South, "just where he is," can as well be taught 
that Christ has hought him, as the degraded, brutalized hu- 
manity " on the banks of his native Chadda and Zambesi ; " 
and as to climatic temperaments and local habitations, there is 
as much reason for the immigration of the African to our South- 
ern clime, as the Saxon and Celt to our N^orthern. 

The third article of the Professor, now under consideration, 
closes with some " home questions ; " all of them, perhaps, not 
in the best taste, and each and every one easily answered. 
The substance of all is contained in the following : " When a 
slave in the South becomes a Christian, will he be still a Jieath- 
en, subject to enslavement, or will he be entitled to his free- 
dom ? " Let Paul to Philemon answer this. He having done 
it, we abstain. Yet we may answer the question, by asking 
another : Did the Jew free his heathen bondman, if he became 
a Jew ? That is an all-sufficient reply. Yet we might further 
ask : AVas it not the great object to make him a Jew, and redeem 
him from the idolatry of heathendom ? Should the Professor 
take the alternative that the slave could not become a Jew, so 
as to enjoy religious privileges, then he would most triumph- 
antly upset his whole argument, by the confession that this 
Hebrew slavery surpassed, in caste and cruelty, the worst fonn 
of the Southern. 



26 AEGUMENT FEOM THE NEW TESTAJVIEJ^. 



ARGUMEJTT FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

PRELmmAKY to tlie argument derived from the New Testa- 
ment, Professor Lewis reverts to liis two constituent ideas of 
slavery, power and property, wliicli lie pronounces logically 
distinct. Intending to be brief, it needs only to be remarked, 
tliat, if property is one of tlie constituent ideas in slavery, one 
witliout wliicli it cannot be, or stand together^ tben it follows 
that it was in the idea of slavery, patriarchal, Jewish, Koman, 
or Christian, as well as American ; and consequently his long 
argument on the property-idea, the sum and substance of his 
entire argument, is by himself essentially annihilated. As to 
their being logically distinct, thus much may be said : Property 
necessarily implies power, but power not necessarily property. • 
He talks, also, of the " morality of slavery " as determined by 
the " absence or presence, predominance or subordinance " of 
the one or the other idea : so that morality is attributable of 
slavery, if only power be present, although he had before said, 
it will be remembered, that it did not depend on the mere 
presence. " Property," too, it is contended, " is essentially 
selfish, powxr essentially unselfish,^' a proposition which needs 
more than assertion, for thoughtful minds, one which it would 
be difficult to maintain, for few things are more selfish than 
power and the desire of power, ambition. The application of 
the statement to the Southern planter is very unfair and un- 
tenable, because, even assuming the truth of his proposition, 
he must allow that the slave there is lield not only as property 
but as person also, as chattel-personal. 

The Professor now grants that we cannot judge of individ- 
uals, whether in this or that one the selfish or unselfish idea pre- 
dominate, but we can form a correct judgment of a national 
slavery, a slavery of an age. " Tlie hidividual can tell for him- 
self Avhethcr he is a man-oioner or a man-ruler,'''' that is, ac- 
cording to the logical distinction of the Professor, whether he 
is selfish or unselfish, whether he governs only for good, or owns 
only for evil. ^Noav it seems to us very clear that a Christian 



AEGUMEISTT FKOM THE NEW TESTAJVCENT. 2'? 

master can be botli owner and ruler, and yet be as unselfish in tlie 
relation, as most men are in the other relations of life ; and it 
is equally clear that one may be an owner and own for the 
good of the slave, unselfishly / another may be a mere ruler 
and not an owner, and rule tyrannically, selfishly, l^ow, in 
the former case, when the master holds, render law, " unselfish- 
ly or for the good of the slave," is he justified in holding, in 
owning ? The Professor's reasoning afiirms that he is, and 
thus he surrenders himself captive to his own logic. 

The case of the centurion is just here adduced as a case in 
point, an apt illustration of the idea of power, the ruling or 
governing for good, and to this is injected a doubt whether the 
ho pais of the centurion was a slave. It is an extreme case 
that takes advantage of every doubt, and to the man in danger 
of execution our laws freely accord it. The Professor will at 
least allow that the probabilities are strongly in favor of the 
judgment that he was a slave, not only because he is called 
doulos as well Si&pais, but because we should scarcely expect 
a Koman centurion to hold his servant in any other relation : 
and if so, ownership in the centurion was not inconsistent with 
unusual piety and faith in Jesus, " such faith as he had not 
found, no, not in Israel." But the case is even stronger. Can 
the Professor believe that, posited as the Saviour was with him, 
he could or should have abstained from pronouncing on the 
inhumanity and unchristianness of property in tnan, if he re- 
garded that, as the Professor does, the most " degrading, de- 
humanizing of ideas," and especially in view of the relation of 
humanity to this very Christ, so graphically portrayed by the 
pen of this ready writer I If that was a sin, particularly if a 
crying sin, could Jesus, the immaculate, any more have with- 
held from putting this disciple to the test on that point, than 
he did from trying the amiable young man by demanding of 
him the sacrifice of his property ? ITever ! never ! This were 
far more degrading to our Master than ownership of man to 
man. Tlie thought of such a possibility, we confess, detracts 
at once from that high, pure, ethereal, superhuman, divine con- 
ception we have, and love to hold, of Jesus. "When we feel 
ourselves obliged to abandon that idea of him, we shall feel 



28 AHaUilENT FROM THE NEW TESTAIMENT. 

like accepting Min only as a great Teaclier, suited to his day. 
Whicli may it never be ! 

Ah, this holy and blessed Master of ours looked more to the 
inner than to the outer life, more to the existence in the soul 
of a living faith in himself as the Christ, than to the social 
and governmental relations of the man, if so be, in those 
relations, he evinced the spirit and temper of the Christian. 
This man was an officer of the Koman empire, having soldiers 
under him and slaves subject to his will, faithfully discharg- 
ing political and social duties, whilst he permeated them 
all with the spirit of Christ. We hear of no release of his 
soldiers, no emancipation of his slaves, but we do read of 
his loving the one and exacting obedience of the other. 

The author next distributes the slavery ages into Patriarch- 
al, Jewish, Koraan, Christian, applying to each his property- 
scale, and attributing to the last the maximum of the property- 
idea. Its essence is "gain per 5^." The Eoman was "less 
mercenary," had " less caste,'' though " more cruel, less de- 
humanizing," " hurt humanity less." ITow the whole of this 
reasoning, if it may be so called, is simply the expandmg of 
the idea of ownership, which the Professor has labored, first to 
evolve as the summuvi malum, the radical dehumanization of 
the race, the substratum of all that is evil in slavery, and then 
to attach preeminently to the American Slavery. Hence his 
declaration that Roman lawyers ever pronomiced slavery as 
ao-ainst natural right, but never made a Dred Scott decision. 
Now, the former it would be difficult for him to prove, the lat- 
ter has no application, for at Rome there were no such consti- 
tutional provisions as with us, never an occasion on which 
such a decision or the opposite could possibly have been de- 
manded. 

But granting, argues the Professor, that the Roman slavery 
was worse than the modern, as most would certainly concede, 
yet the silence of Christ and his Apostles as to its evils, their 
exhortations to patience and submission and cheerful obedience 
on the part of the slave, constitute no justification of slavery. 
But we beg leave here to differ. The silence of Christ and his 
Apostles, their never having, on any occasion, whilst so many 



AEGTIMElSrT FEOM THE KEW TESTAJMEjSTT. 29 

offered, uttered one word of condemnation, even in letters to 
tlie cliurclies, in which they recognize its existence, is most 
amazing and inexplicable, if they deemed of it as the Profes- 
sor does ; if the mere status were so monstrously degrading and 
dehumanizing. 

And again, however much exhortations to submission may 
fall short of justification of the thing submitted to, in them- 
selves considered, yet we think the gist of the argument, as we 
should put it, has been wholly overlooked by the Professor. 
Beside the fact that the exhortations embrace cheerful, hearty 
obedience to a rightful authority, as well as submission to hard 
and cruel impositions by the froward, it is apparent that, if the 
thing itself, the mere ownership or holding of the slave in 
bondage under the Koman law, were wrong, as idolatry, mur- 
der, theft, cruelty, etc., Christ would have denounced that, as 
well as its abuse. But further, the strength of argument, in 
our estimation, lies rather in an unnoticed direction. See 1 
Cor. vi., 9, 10 ; Gal. v., 19-21 ; Eph. v., 3-5 ; Col. iii,, 5-9 ; 
1 Tim. i., 9, 10 ; 1 Pet. iv., 3, 14 ; Kev. xxi., 8 ; xxii., 15. In 
these several passages, " the works of the flesh," and the sins 
wliich indicate an unrenewed nature, exclude from the city of 
God, and subject to " the second death," are specifically and 
reiteratedly recited, and yet, not in one single instance is slav- 
ery enumerated or most distantly hinted at. And it might 
be pardonable here to make use of the argumentum ad homi- 
nem and remind Dr. Lewis, that, as the non -enumeration of 
slaves, in which we have shown him to be mistaken, however, 
with other property of the Hebrews, as flocks and herds, is to 
his mind proof positive that the property idea was wanting in 
the Jewish servitude, equally conclusive must be the absence 
of slavery from the inventory of unchristian and damning sins. 
The damning and unchristian idea must not attach to it, can- 
not belong to it. Remarkable indeed it is, that this crying sin 
of ownership in man is never once denounced nor even hinted 
at as a crime which must blot one's name out of the book of 
life, though it be held, by many of Christ's followers, to be a 
sin of scarlet dye, and " a covenant with hell." 

It is appropriate here, also, to recall the fact that, whenever 



30 ARGUMET^^T PROM THE NEW TESTAirENT. 

the unity of the Christian church is spoken of, the oneness in 
Christ, it is in such wise as to recognize this relation, and in- 
clude the bond and free : " for by one spirit are we all baptized 
into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether bond or free, 
for the body is not one member, but many." " Tliere is neither 
Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither 
male nor female : for ye are all one in Christ Jesus," " Where 
there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumci- 
sion, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free : but Christ is all and 
in all." Col. iii. 11. In the exhortations based on this verse, 
exhortations to the elect of God, to wives, husbands, chil- 
dren, fathers, servants, masters, the chief relations of life, in 
which, on the one part, obedience and submission are duties, 
hear how this clear-headed, heavenly -instructed apostle, just in 
this connection, just on this fundamental statement of the 
union of all classes, bond and free, in Christ, hear how he talks 
to the hond : " Servants," slaves, " obey in all things your mas- 
ters according to the flesh ; " your oivniiig masters. " And 
whatever ye do, do heartily, for ye serve," in thus doing, " the 
Lord Christ." ISTow, if these passages prove or assert any 
thing, they assert this \ that in the brotherhood, the body of 
Christ, there do just as certainly exist the master and slave, 
as the male and female, the Jew and the Greek, and that the 
one Spirit, permeating the one Body, shall alike sanctify them 
all, not disrupting, but combining these relations with the 
" bond of perfectness." 

We now come to the Professor's comments on 1 Tim. vi., 
1-5, and we confess to not a little surprise, in view of the ia- 
tegrity of our brother. His running commentary first perverts 
the evident meaning of the passage, and then finds the " key 
which unlocks the whole difficulty right here ; " "a believing 
master never could regard his helicvmg douloi^''' slaves, " as 
property." " It is Christianly inconceivable ; " " he could not 
ovm, y " " the golden rule would not allow it ; " " the loving 
thoughts of the apostle could not entertain it." Tlie perver- 
sion lies in the insertion of the word " helieving " before mas- 
ters. Tliese servants, he says, " arc enjoined to obey their 
masters, their helieving masters." " Persons who teach other- 



AEGIMENT FEOM THE NEW TESTAMENT. 31 

wise are condemned." Now, if any one, scliolar or no seliolar, 
will turn to tlie passage and read ys. 1, 2, he must see that, in 
the first, there is not only no believing there, but that the speci- 
fication of the second necessarily excludes the qualifying term 
helieving^ from the first. In the first verse it is : " Let as many 
servants (all) as are imder the yoke, count their masters, etc." 
In the second : " And they that have helieving masters, let them 
not despise, etc." Out of as many as are under the yoke, out 
of the entire class of slaves, some have Ijelicving masters. Tliese 
are singled out in the second verse, and thus become specific, 
and the duty here enjoined varies a little from that in the first 
verse, and is founded on a specific and different reason from 
the honor required of all, in the first. Whether the Professor 
is teaching " otherwise " than conformably to the apostle's in- 
junction, it were well for him to search out, lest his own de- 
scription of such teachers attach to himself, and he be found 
" doting about questions of words, and perverse disputings " 
logomachies " of men destitute of the truthP 

" The key, also, which unlocks the whole difficulty," has, 
somehow, become so rusty since it left the Professor's hand, or 
so involved in transcendental and instinctive ligaments, that it 
will not work in the wards of the lock. It fails to open the 
safe for us. It is " mere moonshine " to try to get over the 
plain, simple truth of this and other similar passages, in which 
the same obedience is taught to the master, who was " froward," 
unrighteous^ and " buflTeted his slave for doing well," inflicting 
suffering " wrongfully," unrighteously ', mere vain logomachy^ 
to endeavor to blunt the edge of the truth, by rhetorically en- 
larging on the " apostle's loving thoughts," " the Christian 
inconceivableness, the impossibility of a Christian master re- 
garding his slave as property," the abnegation of " owner- 
ship," " the oneness in Christ," etc., etc. 

Who told our author that these things are so ? Has God ? 
Has Christ ? Have the apostles ? Has any thing higher than 
his own instincts, his own psychological condition ? We pre- 
sumed, at the outset, that we agreed as to the sole standard of 
truth, but we begin to fear. We affirm and prove that the 
early Pauline Christian master could ow7i, and did ow)i, under 



32 AEGUaiENT TEOM TUE NEW TESTAJIENT. 

law, as in the South, and did not, nor was required to, emanci- 
pate. Where, as the Professor so often asks, where the re- 
quirement ? 

Nor does it seem to us that the Professor gains any thing 
for his cause, by his contrast between the political status of 
the Poman empire and the American republic, there being, 
in the former, none of " those social rights and social duties so 
much boasted of in the latter." Pecause, forsooth, there was 
" no citizenship, in the modern sense, no voting, no political 
rights," therefore the slave must submit and be obedient, un- 
der the tyrannical 'power / but here, where there is citizenship, 
let him seek it, let him have it ! Put there was a citizenship 
imder the Poman power. Paul had it. There was the freeman 
and the freedman, there was position enough higher than that 
of a slave. Why not urged to seek that, as well as now, the 
higher political freedom ? And we doubt, besides, whether 
the Professor advocates the universal right of voting by all 
men, of all colors. 

And now again, our author affirms that the " real issue " is, 
that there is not a word of buying or selling slaves in the 1^. T., 
nor a case of discipline for the sin anywhere recorded. Most 
marvellous ! " Not a word of buying and selling." " Not a 
recorded case of discipline for it." It would be strange, in- 
deed, if the apostles should stop, in their letters, to tell us 
whether Epenetus, Andronicus, Apelles, Aristobulus, Pufus, 
Gains, Erastus the chamberlain of the city, ever bought or 
sold a slave. These transfers of property in man were prob- 
ably common in those days and not noteworthy, the Professor's 
psychologic idiosyncrasy to the contrary notwithstanding, al- 
though even he thinks it " barely possible there might have 
been something with the reseiriblance of a sale, but which was 
merely a method taken by one brother for placing another 
brother in a better condition " ! ! ! 

And then, as to " discipline," why should there be any ? 
The presumption is the other way, that there would be none, 
if neither Christ nor his apostles denounced the relation as 
wrong, and especially if recognized as a customary and legal 



AEGUMENT FEOM TIIE NEW TESTAMEISTT. 33 

act. But further, -where are the recorded cases of discipline 
for covetousness, for calumny, for slander, etc., etc. ? 

It may be M'ell enough for the Professorial chair to dilate 
on clerical blindness, and to express astonishment " at this 
jpretended argument from the ITew Testament, which amounts 
to nothing, even when put in the strongest light." It is barely 
possible that they who think they see, see not, and become 
" blind leaders of the blind." At any rate, we think the Pro- 
fessor particularly unfortunate in tlie quotations he makes to 
offset this strong light, and make it seem to be darkness. " If 
a man smite thee on the one cheek, turn to him the other," 
quotes the Professor : and triumphantly asks, thereupon : 
" Does that justify the smiter and the smiting ? " Most assur- 
edly not, is our reply ; but there is, in this case, no legal nor 
recognized relation of any kind, governmental or other, be- 
tween the smiter and the smitten, none, whatever, but the uni- 
versal relation of man to man as brothers of the Adamic fam- 
ily. " Honor the king." " Does that prove monarchy ? " 
Why, no ; but it does prove the right of the reigning power to 
the honor, and the duty of the subject to render it. It here 
proves a relation, and an instituted relation, out of which grow 
rights and duties. And only when the investiture of authority 
is monstrously abused can the rights and duties cease. So 
of the other quotations. Those I have given are the strongest. 

And now our author closes up his argument by a linguical, 
critical disquisition on the word doulos. " It may denote," 
he says, " the servile condition. It may signify a suhject.''^ 
Tlie Professor has not read Aristotle, Plato, Xenophon, the 
tragic and comic writers of Greece to so little purpose, as not 
to know that doiilos does mean, and preeminently mean, a slave, 
man in a servile condition, whilst it does also signify a subject. 
And that it does signify a slave in the IST. T., in those passages 
on which our argument mainly rests, he assuredly cannot can- 
didly and critically deny. But " there is a word in the Greek 
language," proceeds the Professor, " that is always servile? 
ever used to denote slaves as property, the word andrajpodwiP 
It is true that this term has a very servile smell about it, and 
one does not like to handle it much. For this reason, perhaps, 
3 



34 AEGUJIENT FEOM THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

the Doctor so quickly dropped it. Had lie handled it a little 
more, turning it over and over, he probably would have found 
some of the properties he attributed to it suddenly evanishing : 
e. g. : " exceedingly common in the classic Greek," " very fa- 
miliar wherever Paul travelled," " always used with the ser- 
vile notion," " denoting that that to which it is applied is a 
thing or chattel, without true personality." It need not be so 
wondered at that the New Testament and Paul never used it, 
although " so common in Athenian Greek." The reasons, 
doubtless, 'were,Jirst, that doulos was the usual word to ex- 
press the slave relation of the Koman empire, and that an- 
drapodon, instead of being " exceedingly common," " very 
familiar wherever Paul travelled," etc., was exceedingly rare, 
nor did it, as asserted, " denote a thing without personality," but 
a person sold into slavery ; secondly, that Paul and other apos- 
tles would naturally prefer, in full recognition, however, of 
their servile state, to employ a term not so degrading as an- 
drapodon. Why should he choose to denominate these Chris- 
tian slaves, vile things, lit only to be at the feet of another, as 
the word means, or to be " kicked and cuffed." There is no 
conceivable reason why Paul should, notwithstanding his 
recognition of the right of property in the master, ever make 
use of a word, uncommon at the time, and specifically designed 
to lower the humanity-idea, l^or does the Professor, in our 
view, establish his scholarship by his criticism on the word 
andrapodlstes, which he translates, slave-trader ^ in our version, 
man-stealer. 1 Tim. i. 9, 10. " The law is made for patri- 
cides and matricides, for man-slayers, for men-stecders, etc." 
The " association" here, in which the apostle puts the andra- 
podistes, is such, he thinks, that Paul could never have applied 
the idea of human property, the thing in which the andrapo- 
distes dealt, to a man, much less to a Christian brother. The as- 
sociation is truly bad enough, but it is most unfortunate for 
the Professor that the master, the slaveowner merely, is not one 
of the members of the association. It is only the " slave-tra- 
d'Cr^'' or man-stecder, according to our version. And we verily 
believe, witli Herodotus, Plato, Xenophon, and all good lexi- 
cographers, that the slave-trader, in the apostle's category, was 



AEGtJMENT FEOM THE NEW TESTAMENT. 35 

first the stecaler, and then the selleT or trader : he did the former 
in order to the Latter. Tlie only representatives of the class in 
our country are those who kidnap other people's slaves, and 
abet those who do, by building underground railroads and 
writing books on the inhumanity and horridity of slavery : for 
the word distinctively means one loTio Icidiiaps, steals free men 
or other 'peoplo's slaves for the purjpose of selling. Moreover, 
as in the South the slave-trader is despicable, and not admitted 
into society, whilst the slave-owner has a high social status, so 
the same distinction was probably made in the apostle's day. 
The one was a legalized and reputable social relation, whilst 
the other excluded the perpetrator from the pale of a high 
civilization. Hence the apostles associated the slave stealer 
and trader with the " unholy and profane, murderers of fathers 
and mothers, perjurers, etc.," whilst he left out the slave oivner 
or master. Easy it is for the learned Professor, from his own 
stand-point, to seize on certain passages of the glorious gospel 
of the blessed God, and, with the aid of imagination, infuse 
into them his own idiosyncracy ; but whether his stand-point is 
biblical, is quite another question. Since 1776 it has been 
supremely easy in this land of peculiar liberty, to portray in 
glowing colors the beautiful form of freedom, to represent 
lovely crowds sweetly kissing her feet, and other multitudes 
throwing their festal wreaths over her head and neck, whilst 
they make the very heavens to ring with their plaudit hosannas. 
But instead of all this, to go and sit down as a worshipper at 
the pedestal of naked, angular Truth, where probably few will 
sympathize with your veneration, is not so genial. Yet is it a 
higher worship than the other. 

And now, just now, it is very easy, and it may be very 
popular, to talk beautifully of some of the spiritual ideas of 
the Gospel ; yet this may all be quite incidental and transcen- 
dental to the argument. It may be palatable, indeed, to serve 
up a dish of highly spiced sophistry, and pass it round among 
the guests for something solid ; but it will turn to wormwood 
in the mouth and to gall in the stomach. Such we deem those 
closing passages of the Professor. They are solely applicable 
to the purely gain-loving master, to the abominable abuses of 



36 ARGUMENT FROM THE ISTEW TESTAMENT. 

slavery, whilst the biblical argument relates only to the thing 
itself, to the relation of master and slave, constituting mutual 
rights and duties. 

One thing is very certain, that, if apostles sent letters to 
churches, they must have intended them to be understood as 
referring to things then existing, however applicable, also, to 
things future. And no Greek, nor Jew, nor Roman of that day, 
could possibly have put any other interpretation on the words 
of Paul and Peter than this : that obedience on the part of 
subordinates was one of the first and highest of Christian 
duties ; that subordination was ordained of God ; that the 
relation of master and slave was consistent with Christianity, 
though it were a relation of ownership, and that mutual rights 
and duties grew out of this relation, incumbent on both ; that 
to be a Christian slave of even a " froward " master was not a 
matter to be " cared for," and might be a privilege, whilst to 
be a Christian slave of a " believing " or Christian master, was 
to be in one of the most tender and loving relations of life ; 
and that he who taught otherwise was " proud, knowing noth- 
ing " of the subject, and not to be accepted as a Christian 
teacher. " From such withdraw thyself," says the apostle. So 
that, really, whilst Northern ministers and chm-ches, in refusing 
fellowship with slaveholders act without authority, and con- 
trary to the teaching and action of the apostles, Southern 
churches and ministers might quote Scripture, if so disposed, 
for non-intercourse with such Abolition teachers, and exclude 
them, on the authority of Paul, from recognition as ministers 
of the truth. 

And now let us look a little more closely into the " interior 
spirit " of the Gospel on which the Professor descants so largely 
and so warmly. "We confess, here, to seeing differently from 
the Doctor. Our spiritual eye may be affected with a cataract 
or a paralysis of the nerve, unfitting us for reading the "Word 
intelligently ; and yet, we are much inclined to believe, rather, 
that the Professor has borrowed some spiritualistic glasses of 
modem days, which have the power of throwing a mist of ob- 
scurity over the printed page of the Gospel, whilst they reveal, 
in large letters, some otherwise invisible lines. Or he reads. 



AEGUMElfT FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT. 37 

perhaps, some Palimpsest copies, in whicli tlie original writings, 
long defaced, are illumed with the interior view, not percep- 
tible in the common version. 

To our vision this seems the inner meaning and spirit of the 
whole Bible, the " apostolic stand-point" as well; to wit: that 
the material is for the moral, the mutable for the immutable. 
The whole creation travaileth in pain together, waiting for a 
redemption. Earth crumbles, elements melt, the heavens are 
rolled together as a scroll. Life is a vapor, a shadow, a pass- 
ing cloud, a weaver's shuttle. Its relations are of little ac- 
count. The fashion, the sliapes, the forms, the relations, the 
all of this world, is passing away. Look beyond. That is 
Christ's doctrine, as well as of Moses, prophets, and apostles. 
There even the tenderest relation of life ceases, and they 
" neither marry nor are given in marriage." It was of little 
moment to the sweet singer of Israel, whether he were the 
king on the throne or the subject at its foot, whether the son 
of Jesse tending his father's flocks on the hill-sides of Judea, 
or the crowned and jewelled monarch on the summit of Zion. 
In this view, also, Christ, the executive of all government and 
the head of a kingdom not of this world, thought it not worth 
the while to stoop to the consideration of the mere temporary 
relations of earth, not touching the established and existing 
forms of social and political life, not even inquiring whether a 
man were master or slave, except as to the mutual duties of 
both, but ever looking beyond and pointing to higher and eter- 
nal relations, to be secured by faith and obedience, in every 
condition and position of life. He regarded submission to 
Csesar, even to Kero, thus illustrating the higher life, as of far 
more importance to the subject than the rupture of the bonds 
of organized society. 

Let us not, then, think so much of hurling thunderbolts at 
the head of the Southern master, of building " underground 
railroads " to nm off the slave, of sending emissaries, living 
and lifeless, to hurry them up to a false sense of their rights, 
of breaking their chains, and unbinding their bonds, of giving 
them political liberty, as if this were the acm^ of earth's hopes 
and blessings. Let us not think that to be " born of Abra- 



38 aegujVient feom the new testament. 

ham," is the excejlence of life, but let us rather hear the teach- 
ing of Jesus, when, he says : " K the son shall make you free, 
then shall ye be free indeed," Yes, there is something higher, 
better than mere human freedom, better than descent from the 
free and the noble, something that permeates the soul, and 
makes up an interior life, which is comparatively regardless of 
outward circumstances and temporal relations ; something that 
lifts a Lazarus above his pampered lord, that inspires songs in 
the prison, whose music drowns the clanking of chains and 
breaks the dungeon doors ; a something that welcomes faggots 
and bonds of slavery, if it be but the Master's will ; something 
which lights up a smile of joy on the beaming face of the 
Christian slave never reflected from the brow of the ungodly 
and froward master, which makes him happier in his toils, 
though under the lash, than if merely crowned with all the 
freedom which earth and state could give him ; something, in 
fine, which should lead us all to sing, not, " Give me liberty or 
give me death," but give me Christ or give me naught. A 
freedman in him, it matters little whether I be the subject of 
a tyrannical monarch or the citizen of a free republic ; whether 
I toil, from childhood up, in the dark, miasmatic mines, or in 
the close, oily, fibrous atmosphere of the ever-clinking factory, 
or in the kitchen cabinet of a master, or the cotton-field of the 
planter. I would rather be a slave all my days, and sit at the 
feet of Jesus to learn patience, humility, and meekness, and 
then go to wear the laurels of victory in his heavenly kingdom 
forever, tlian to possess here the highest honors freedom can 
bestow, and then sink, a lost soul, into the darkness of eternal 
night. I do not say that to be all this and be qualified for it in 
freedom is not, in some wise, better ; but I do mean to say 
that prophets, and Christ, and apostles, thought liberty of little 
account ; in the comparison, scarce worth a thought or a word. 
See the apostolic earnestness : " I determined to know 
nothing else, save Jesus Christ and him crucified." Ah yes, 
may the Professor say, as a ground of pardon and of reconcilia- 
tion. True, but I take a higher point of observation, a stand- 
point from which is seen all that the other presents, and bright 
and beauteous visions beyond. ^^Knoio nothing elseJ^ Yes, 



AEGUlVrEI^n? FROM TIIE NEW TESTAMENT. 39 

all tlie gorgeousness of eartli's trappings is just nothing ; all 
the mere adventitious surroundings of man are mere bubbles : 
to be in Christ is all, is every thing. Whether a' man be a 
slave or a freeman, Avhether a capitalist or a laborer, whether 
a serf or a lord, whether a subject or a sovereign, is to me of 
no consideration. To think of these things, to dwell on man's 
rights, and woman's rights, as tlie all-absorbing aim and effort, 
is just as if, whilst I could direct my glass to the burning 
glories of the Sun of Eighteousness and to the pearly gates 
and golden streets and etliereal mansions of the heavenly city, 
I should turn it rather to the floating specks or the dark spots 
in that sun's atmosphere and the dreary abysses of the second 
death. ]^ever thus did Paul, nor Peter. They deemed it bet- 
ter for the slave even to continue in his social status, and there 
to exhibit the transforming power of the gospel, than to grasp 
after liberty. 

And if Jesus thought it not needful for him to reprove the 
pious centurion for hqlding office under a most tyrannical 
power, and at the same time holding property in man ; (and 
that he did no scholar should dispute if He thought it well to 
receive this man to intimate fellowship) ; and to commend 
his faith to the pious of all ages ; if He deemed it not degrad- 
ing nor dehumanizing to oion a fellow man, why should we 
shrink from the contamination of contact with slaveholders ? 
why should we, in the spirit of the feeling, " Stand off, for I 
am holier than thou," denounce and curse him, and put caste 
upon him in both church and state ? Oh, for more of Christ's 
humility and self-abasement. " He thought it not robbery 
to be equal with God, yet took upon him the form of a ser- 
vanty It were better for us to follow his steps, take his guid- 
ance, do as he did in this matter, than to be foremost in advo- 
cacy of human rights and universal liberty, maugre all the 
jewels it might set in our brow. Let Him be our teacher, and 
to whatsoever that teaching shall lead, let us gladly follow. 

I cannot believe that Jesus Christ ever intended that his 
church should make aggressive attacks on governments or on 
organized legal relations in state-life or social-life. Govern- 
ment was his own ordinance, and to violate it a greater sin and 



40 SLAVEEY AND THE CHUECH. 

evil than to antagonize its institutions as to the relations of 
social and political life. " My kingdom is not of this world." 
It permeates all governments, all kingdoms, all dominions, all 
states. Intended to be adapted to the Oriental, the Indian, 
the Islander, the African, the all of peoples and of govern- 
mental forms : not to disturb but to control ; not so much to 
guard " Natural Eights," as to give new rights and to infuse 
a spirit of life into all and over all. 

E'ow, there is a ground on which North and South, free- 
holder and slaveholder can meet, Lewis and Palmer, Hodge 
and Thornwell, N. Adams and N. Rice, Barnes and Ross, a 
panoplied host, clad in the armor of the gospel, the shield of 
faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit. 
Thus accoutred and thus led, our legions shall go forth, con- 
quering and to conquer, and, instead of fighting shadows and 
abstractions, beating the air, shall fight the good fight of faith, 
and under the banner of the cross, which ever waved over the 
apostles' heads, shall deal deadly blows to the enemies of our 
faith : and, under the great Captain of our salvation, shall enter 
the citadel and subject the Prince of the power of the air, even 
Satan, the Deceiver of the nations and the enemy of all righte- 
ousness. 

SLAVERY AND THE CHUECH. 

In this article. Prof. Lewis begins by laying down some 
conceded principles, the chief of which is, that " the power of 
the clergy to afi'ect the world for good or ill, can have no second 
place." 

But the PiK)fessor finds in the clergy and in the church 
little recognition of this controlling power, but " a wide desire 
to find some easier or less responsible place," a disj)Osition " to 
talk of Christianity as a power smoothly mixing with the world, 
moulding it by the silent efiicacy of doctrines never preached, 
of a spirit never exhibited, insensibly leavening it without any 
disturbing force." Men, who adopt extreme views, requiring 
a wresting of the Scriptures for their support, are very prone to 
become harsh in their judgments and extremists in tl^e^''' 



SLAVEEY AUB THE CHUECH. 41 

charges. The clergy, undoubtedly, under a deep sense of 
their weakness, amid the dark and damning powers of sin and 
Satan in this accursed world, often cry out, " Who is sufficient 
for these things ? " and feel deeply and humbly that they are 
but " earthen vessels ; " yet it is too much for the recluse Pro- 
fessor to charge on the ministry of Jesus Christ in this land, 
the absolute desertion of their " high calling," the dastardly 
choice of expecting powerful effects from " doctrines never 
preached," " a spirit never exercised ; " the " desire to find some 
easier way " than aggression on the world, the world " spiritu- 
ally," as he says ; i. e., the world in its sinful principles and 
imgodly practices. Tantum siifficit. "We fear, more and 
more, the power over the Professor of the one idea of owner- 
ship. 

We now come to the great question of his fifth article : 
" Has the church moulded politics, or politics the church ? " 
and the Professor answers it thus : " The Christianity of the 
South, the Christianity, to a wide extent, of the North, has been 
moulded, and continues to be moulded, by the politicians." 
" The clergy have followed in the worldly wake." 

With beautiful, christian " sarcasm," too, with an irony, 
for which he apologizes, by calling it " the irony of fact," he 
pours out a torrent of bitterness on those of the clergy who 
might assume that the change of view on the subject of slavery 
was attributable to the influence of the church, growing out 
of a more independent biblical study. 

And now, to the proof of his own answer to the question, 
to wit, that politics has controlled the church. What is that 
proof? Wherein does it consist ? First, in the fact of a mere 
" whisper, and hardly that, in condemnation of the Dred Scott 
decision." lo ! triomphe ! to Dr. Cheever ! And, " why have 
our churches," the Prof, asks, " felt so little that deep wound 
to Christianity, as well as to humanity ? " This is at best a 
negative proof, though in reality failing in every attribute of 
evidence. To be proven : Politics control the clergy. Proof 
first : " The clergy have failed to condemn and denounce the 
Dred Scott decision. Kow, in our humble opinion, there is no 
relation in the proof to the proposition, and of course no rea- 



42 SLAVERY AND THE CHUECH. 

soning, no logic. It takes for granted what is not true, that 
the clergy is aj)pointed to review the decisions of the Judicial 
Powers of the Government, and if it fail so to do, it is under 
the control of politics. AVhereas Christ, the Master and Head 
of the clergy, emphatically declined, in more than one case, to 
undertake any such review, or to give any judicial decisions, 
saying : " My kingdom is not of this world." " Give unto 
Caesar," leave unto Csesar, " the things that are Csesar's." 
" Who made me a judge ? " And if there were any force in 
such a reason, it were just as forceful to adduce the mere 
whisper, and hardly that, in condemnation " of the clearly un- 
constitutional " Personal Liberty Bills. 

Moreover, it is quite as Christian and quite as facile, to pre- 
sume that the abstinence from " condemnation," in this case, on 
the part of the ministry, grew out of a higher conception of 
their calling than that implied in the Professor's charges ; a 
conception resting on both the precepts and example of the 
Master, and of the great Apostle to the Gentiles, and leading 
them to regard the preaching of Christ and Him crucified as 
of far more import, obligation, and utility, than to be revising 
and denouncing the decisions of Supreme Judges, presumed to 
be acting under the solemnity of their oaths. The " Dred 
Scott decision " was simply a legal, judicial interpretation of 
the Constitution, which the Court was sworn to interpret, by 
constitutional law, and which it sustained, also, by a process 
of reasoning founded on facts and their relations, which meets 
the general approbation of unbiassed judges and of thinking 
men. The pulpit, certainly, could not, with much propriety, 
or authority, from the Master, undertake to denounce it as un- 
christian, antichristian, wicked, or of " the world." And even 
though a Boanerges, or an Iconoclast, here and there, should, 
in a frenzy, deem himself officially appointed to thunder in the 
political heavens, and thus to crush the idols of the political 
church ; and though a quiet monk, or son of consolation even, 
should shout after him. All hail ! it would not follow that 
they two only were the faithful ministers of Christ, the sole 
interpreters of his Gospel, the purest specimens of vicegerency 



SLAVEEY AND THE CHUECH. 43 

on eartli. Nay verily ; but ratlier tliey, who preacli " the 
truth as it is i7i Jesus," and walk humbly with God. 
• In regard to the decision itself, a single word. The Pro- 
fessor pronounces it, a " sinking of the colored man to the 
level of the brute," a " deciding that he is no member of the 
state, that is, no member of humanity ; " and he quotes Aris- 
totle in conhrmation : " Out of the state," says the greatest 
philosopher of antiquity, " man ceases to be properly man ; " 
cut off from " all inemhership with a social human organism, 
he sinks to the level of the brute." The Professor knows, as 
he must have read the philosopher, that this author includes 
the slave in " the social human organism," in municipal society, 
in the state, and of course, as it seems to us, had no reference 
whatever to a slave, as ceasing, in that relation, to be " prop- 
erly man," and sinking to " the level of the brute." He evi- 
dently refers to man in a state of barbaric individualism, being, 
in no sense, part or parcel of a regulated community, a state. 
His rendering, too, of the Dred Scott decision is sui generis. 
It decides, he says, that the slave is " no member of the state 
at all, that is, no member of humanity." Now, first, his state- 
ment of the decision is untrue, and secondly, his expletive still 
more so. It does not follow that, if the decision were that he 
is no member of the state, he is therefore no member of human- 
ity ; and it is gross injustice so to represent either to himself 
or to unthinking readers. Nor is it true that the decision pro- 
nounces the colored man " no member of the state." Only 
that, under the Constitution, he is not entitled to the rights of 
citizenshii). The Professor sees the difference between this and 
his statement. 

His second proof of the assertion, that politics control the 
clergy and the church, is no more negative, but positive. It 
consists in taking a stand-point of his own, and there summon- 
ing up before him, on the one hand, the General Assembly of 
the Presbyterian Church of these United States ; on the other, 
the celebrated Southern statesman, John C. Calhoun. Now, the 
former of these august personages in the spectacle, stands up 
mighty and majestic, holding in his hand the act of 1818, a 
verv Lutheric bill of denunciation against slavery. But, hav- 



44 SLAVEEY AND THE CHUECH. 

ing thus bombasted awhile, with tremendous gesticulation and 
ejaculation, this awful personage quietly subsides, and, in a 
dissolving view, gradually evanishes into nonentity. The lat- 
ter, appearing as " a young j)olitician," then as " a member 
of the Senate," and then " Yice-president of the United States,'' 
and then, in the foreground of the picture, " the champion of 
slavery," " the oracle, the Bible of the Southern States ;" and 
though with " no great power of individual statesmanship "(? !) 
though " a disappointed, worldly politician, with no rank as a 
Christian, even if a nominal believer," (who made thee a 
judge ?) yet dri\dng off his antagonist, the General Assembly, 
chasing the dissolving view into a dim shadow, and himself 
filling the foreground, background and middle, the all, of the 
canvas. 

In other words, and without a figure, the Professor quotes 
the action of the assembly as the noblest Abolition testimony, 
represents it as lying a dead letter on the old minutes, essentially, 
though not formally repealed ; whilst the rise and the disap- 
pointment of Calhoun in his unmet aspirations for the Presi- 
dency, became marked by his announcement of a new doctrine 
of slavery, which led the clergy to a new study of the Bible, 
resulting in a general adoption of his views in the South, and 
extensively in the iJ^orth. This, then, is the Professor's second 
and chief argument, to which he devotes two whole columns 
of the " Woi5d." 

Forty-two years ago, the General Assembly denounced 
slavery as an awful sin, equalling " the Abolitionists in strength 
of language," About forty-two years ago, John C. Calhoun 
just " rose into notice as a young politician." The politician 
and the ecclesiastical act were born together, the one, like 
Minerva, full sized and equipped ; the other an infant stripling. 
But, lo ! as we gazed, the mighty man evanished, the stripling 
became a power in the country. Therefore, says the Professor, 
the stripling conquered the giant- Calhoun was the cause of 
the failure of the act. Politics controlled the church. Calhoun 
beat the drum, and the Christian forces assembled. lie gave 
the v»'ord, the panoplied hosts fought under his banner. Tlie 
Great Master's voice they could no longer hear, nor anv more 



SLAVEEY AND THE CHITECH. 45 

fight under the banner of the cross. Poor deserters ; we pity 
you ! Why do you not now, since your leader is gone, a dis- 
appointed politician, without a particle of piety, too, why do 
you not, we beseech you, hear the trumpet call of the valiant 
Professor, and, under his lead, retrace your steps, and, by a 
counter-march, wheel into the legions of the gi'eat captain, ac- 
coutred in all the armor of the Abolition-regiment ? 

A few passing comments. The Professor attributes the 
new study of the Bible by God's ministers and people, to the 
dictation of Calhoun. Is it not possible to see a better motive? 
— " Politics," lie says, " has moulded our biblical and theo- 
logical thinking." Why is this singularly true of one class of 
ministers ? Why not as easy and as true, to say of the Profes- 
sor and his sympathizers, that their " biblical thinking is 
moulded by politics ; " that mighty ISTorthern politicians and 
their doctrines of " non-extension " and " irrepressible conflict " 
control him ? 

And when he intimates that the "learned and devout 
English, Scotch, and German commentators do not discover 
the doctrine," of biblical slavery, that it is found only " in 
association with slavery," what does he mean ? I aver that all 
of them, who are recognized authorities in hermeneutics, in- 
cluding also our own, do interiDret the Bible words, and phrases, 
and passages, bearing on the subject, in such way as truthful 
exegesis requires, and as sustains the positions disputed by the 
Professor. 

We wonder that, as the Professor has changed his own 
views, and turned a complete sommersauU in Jive years, which 
he has nohly acknowledged, writing himself, "Lewis verstis 
Lewis," a rare humility ; we wonder he could not conceive that 
the Presbyterian church, or many in it, might vary their views 
of The Act, \w forty-two years. He, at least, should have made 
some allowance for his brethren, rather than berate his own 
church as he does. Perhaps beating up recruits, and trying to 
frighten learned divines and unlearned laity into his ranks ! 
It is very manifest, at least, from the tenor of his closing re- 
marks or exhortations, in which he calls on his church, to " go 
back to her old testimony," to " repeal, renounce, repent," or 



46 SLAVERY AND POLITICS. 

" enforce in word and discipline," witli " the decision of a 
power having the keys, that an assault is intended, perhaps in 
the next assembly. And then, to " re-examine Scripture instead 
of holding fast to an ecclesiastical action^'' is the " casting down 
of Zion." An ecclesiastical act above and beyond Scrijptv/ral 
study and doctrines based on it, what shall we say of it ? Eather 
too high ! 

There is, throughout this article, we are sorry to see it, 
and to say it, an undue, and unfitting censoriousness, sarcasm, 
and obloquy of God's ministry and church — an essential Aboli- 
tionism hard in its terms. 



SLAVERY AND POLITICS. 

In his sixth article, the Professor continues the proof of his 
proposition, that jMitics control the church, and slavery politics. 
Facts, he says, prove it. And the first fact is, that the nation's 
existence is imperilled, and slavery is the cause. This " fearful 
element of evil in our nation's infancy was suffered to remain," 
in expectation that " the spirit of freedom " would soon extin- 
guish it. " Without this pervading sentiment, the Constitution 
would never have been formed." This is, indeed, one view of 
the case, but whether the fact-vieio, or not, is another ques- 
tion. Tliere is a diflferent view, quite as clearly, at least, yea, 
more clearly written on the page of history, that without slav- 
ery, the Constitution could never have been formed ; and, per- 
haps, further reading might convince us that it was not " held 
everywhere and by all, that the spirit of freedom would soon 
cause to disappear every thing not in perfect harmony with it ;" 
indeed, that there was far from being an expectation by the 
fathers, that slavery would die out, " by letting it alone." In- 
stead of the epitaph on our country's tomb being, " Died of 
slavery,^'' it were well for him who writes it, to search deeply 
into causes, and scrutinize carefully on the post-mortem exami- 
nation, in order to see whether the truthful inscription should 
not be. Died of unchristian meddling with slavery, and con- 
sequent violation of compacts. Whilst it was " let alone," for 
nearly fifty years, it grew side by side with the freedom of the 



SLAVERY AKD POLITICS. 4^ 

North, the one symbolized by the stm-dy oak, the other by the 
tall and graceful palmetto. But when the spirit of Abolition- 
ism began to work and to leaven the masses of the North, it 
could not be exorcised ; but, possessing its subjects with a fu- 
ror, it made them meddlers in other people's matters, and they 
spread an infecting virus even into the body politic, which 
marred its beauty, maimed its limbs, and shore it of its auburn 
locks. 

So a nest of spiteful vipers might lie in repose in the cradle 
of a sleeping babe, or coil harmless around its limbs, until 
roused by some demon spell ; and then, and not till then, would 
they infuse their venom into its blood, and eat out its life. The 
poisonous fangs were, indeed, in this case, the immediate cause 
of death, yet those fangs lay still in their sheath, never spit out 
their venom, nor affected the beauteous thing, until irritated 
from without by some tormenting goad. 

TVe look further, and through the article, for the other 
facts " barely to state which is to render the conclusion in- 
controvertible ; " the conclusion that slavery and politics con- 
trol religion ; but we can find fio)ie. There is the expression 
of an evident feeling of goneness, as the doctors might say, 
while the Professor descants on the fading away of the " hope 
that our Christianity would heal it," the " indifferency to which 
good men have given their clerical countenance," instead of 
preaching against this political evil, as he himself here sets it 
forth ; which, by the way, did not the apostles. The goneness 
becomes an apoplexy, when, in conclusion, he again dilates on 
that awful " Dred Scott decision," and almost pronounces judg- 
ment on Mr. O'Conor, the Tract Society, and all men and 
ministers who cannot, and do not, see in it the very virus of 
the damned, and denounce it most lustily from the consecrate 
pulpit of the church. Tliere are good men and true, North, 
South, East, and West ; there are holy messengers of the cross, 
who read and interpret that same judicial decision very differ- 
ently from the Professor, and many, too, who may read it 
much as he does, and yet not deem it of their special duties, 
as he does of his, to thunder against it from the pulpit, nor to 
write it down through the Press. 



48 SLAVERY AND POLITICS. 

The great difficulty witli our Professor here, as elsewhere, 
is, that, with wizard wand he conjures up unreal witches, and 
then, as easily, with wizard wand, bids them down again into 
their wonted darkness. He is evidently undertaking to estab- 
lish his theory that ownersM]) for gain is the essence, the all in 
all of slavery, and that this is utterly inconsistent with the prac- 
tice of the golden rule. And, whilst he evidently expects his 
opponents to include in the idea of slavery, all and every of its 
concomitant though unnecessary and unusual abuses, he him- 
self refuses to accept the real issue, to wit : not whether sla- 
very abounds in abuses, but whether a slavery legalized and 
regulated by law, consisting essentially in a right to the time, 
talents, and services of others without their consent, with a 
right to sell the same, and a correspondent obligation of care, 
kindness, protection, and provision, on the part of the owner ^ 
whether such a slavery is inconsistent with the principles of 
the Bible, and the practice of Christianity. It is likewise over- 
looked that the slave is always called a person to distinguish 
him from other property. 

Wlien, also, he denies the application of the golden rule to 
the system of slavery, and asserts that servile ownership can- 
not exist under it, he becomes involved in one of his transcen- 
dental clouds, and cannot see the bold principles of the Bible 
standing out like great promontories in a sea of light and love. 
The exposition of this golden rule, given by its great Author 
himself, is this : " Tliou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." 
Such is his summary of the second table of the Law, as it is 
called, embracing our duties to our neighbors ; and the golden 
rule covers the same ground, not that of duties owing to God. 
IS'ow, the last of the laws of the second table, the tenth com- 
mandment, as well as the fourth, clearly recognizes the rela- 
tions of slavery, property-slavery, too ; and Christ, therefore, 
embraces it in his summary or law of love, and thus proclaims 
its application to " a servile ownership," equally with all the 
other relations recognized in this commandment. 

Again, if this " claim of servile ownership," this slavery, 
which we are discussing, " lies out of the pale of Christianity," 
and cannot consist with the golden rule, it is amazingly strange 



THE BLOOD-UNITY OF THE EACE. 49 

that the Author of the rule, after having promulgated it and 
laid it down as a principle to be put into the comer-stone of his 
church, should nevertheless forget to remind the centurion that 
his " servile ownership," his masterly relation to his doulos, (for 
it is ho pais only in Matthew, and that, too, means slave,) his 
slave, " lies out of the pale of Christianity, out of the kingdom 
of God, in a region of outer darkness," so utterly inconsistent 
with his fundamental law, that it " could have no place under 
it," and must be abandoned. 

And again, Paul and Peter must have understood the sig- 
nificance of that golden rule of the master, quite as well as any 
teachers of modern days, and they, in their injunctions on mas- 
ters and slaves, never even hint that servile ownership was out- 
side the law of love ; but, on the contrary, by application of its 
principle to the mutual duties of such relation, positively place 
the relation itself, not outside of, but inside, and under this 
heavenly and Christian Rule. 

THE BLOOD-UNITY OF THE RACE. 

In his next chapter, the Professor with a great deal of the 
" inner sense," the sentimental heart, and an almost utter ne- 
gation of the pure intellect, although he again quotes Aristotle, 
the " Pure Intellect " philosopher of antiquity, proceeds to 
comment, both dramatically and sentimentally, on the text of 
Paul on Mars' Hill : " God hath made of one blood all nations 
to dwell upon all the face of the earth." " Its application to 
slavery was obvious enough," he says ; but Paul's higher 
object was not " to preach merely a political jubilee," but to 
lead the soul to that all-embracing article, that all men are the 
" offspring of God," and that " He hath made of one blood,'^ 
of one life, " all nations." And then he asks, with rhetoric in- 
terrogation, " Can one such being own another ? " It might 
be queried whether Dr. Lewis is justified here, in charging Paul 
with preaching a "^c»?^'^^mZ jubilee," but we let that pass. 

The Professor, as if haunted by his new evolution of the 
idea of ownersTii'p, runs off again into a prolix eulogy of his 
distinction between ruling and owning, or government and 

4: 



50 THE BLOOD-UNITY OF THE EACE. 

2yroperty, just as if it ever needed a new bolstering up, like a 
verj feeble, sinking patient. This, it seems to tis very much, 
to need, and we leave it to its fall without adding another 
blow. 

Having transfused, as he presumes, his own degraded no- 
tion of owning into the feelings of his readers, he leaves it 
there to work its effect on the conscience, strengthening the 
idea, meanwhile, by superadding that " the blood is the life, 
the one generic life," which flows alike in all, and binds each 
member to every other in a relation of kinshij?., which must 
forever forbid the idea of ownership of a fellow-man, a Idns- 
onan. Yet the Professor did, in an earlier article, most strenu- 
ously contend that Christ had bought us, owned us, that we 
were his 2)ossession, and that hence no one else could oum any 
of us, any of the race. The interpretation we did not accept ; 
but we may ask the Professor whether ownership is in Christ 
degradmg, such ownership as he there assigned to him ? 

He now ascends higher than the one generic life, the one 
hlood of the first Adam, and confers on the race " a divine hu- 
manity," even that derived from Christ's assumption of it, his 
new sinless humanity coming out of the old ; and thus, histori- 
cally and generically connected with it, elevating the whole, 
both antecedent and subsequent, to his own human life. 
" Qirist makes a new bond, a new generic, or life-bond, between 
all the sons of Adam." 

But this is not all. " Tliere is a higher relation still," a di- 
vine life growing up on faith in Jesus, but still finding its 
" ground " in the universal renewed human life imparted by the 
incarnation. Having thus built up three humanities, the first 
Adamic, the second Adamic, and the divine, or that of the Chris- 
tian brotherhood, the Professor reiterates his old question with 
a triple emphasis : " Can two such sons of God stand in the rela- 
tion of owner and owned ? " Why, although the Professor 
" feels that this is not a mere mystic sentimentality,^^ we yet 
cannot avoid asking. Did any two such sons of God ever stand 
in such relation f And, has Christ, the Head of all this trij^lo 
humanity, the emibodiment of it, if ive may so say, has He ever 
told us that they cannot stand in such relation ? To the latter 



THE BLOOD-mnTY OF THE EACE. 51 

we fire bomid to reply, nowhere. To the former, that Christ 
and his apostles have led us unhesitatingly to believe that 
many did, in their day ; and, in our own, we thinlc we have 
seen them. But we find, in the Professor, instinctive senti- 
ments for Christian principles, personal idiosyncrasy for bibli- 
cal facts. Yet, to ward off the " charge of sentimentalism," he 
advises us that this " argument is the same in substance as was 
made, two thousand years ago, by one who was called the 
' Pure Intellect,' the unemotional reason." He refers to Aris- 
totle's treatise on pJiilia, friendsMj), in his Nichomachean 
Ethics, Ch. 8, Bk. XI. " There can be no true philia, no real 
human friendship," says this unemotional philosoxDher, accord- 
ing to Professor Lewis, " between a despotes, as owner, (the 
Professor's translation,) and a dozdos, as property, or a thing 
owned." Thanks are due our scholar for these translations of 
despotes and doulos, owning master' and owned thing or prop- 
erty, the very same we are wont to make of these terms in the 
New Testament, and which, we are sorry, the Professor forgot, 
when he translated there, and hope he will evermore remem- 
ber, both when he reads for himself, and interprets for others 
not learned in the Greek. ITotice, also, the use of do^dos, not 
andrapodon, by the old sage, just when he calls the slave 
property. 

Tlie reason Aristotle gives for his denial of philia between 
the despotes and doulos, master and slave, is this : " where there 
is no lioinon, there is no dikaion, and where no dllcawn, no 
philia^ " As a slave, therefore, there can be to him no friend- 
shij)," " in other words," adjcls the Professor, " no human rela- 
tion," which Aristotle does not say, although much in the 
practice of saying just what he meant. Indeed, he allows the 
opposite, that there can be a human relation, although no 
friendship. It is further declared, also, by our Professor, that 
" the apostle could never have regarded the relation as one of 
property," or he could not have enjoined the duty of obedience. 
The idea is that there could be no such thing as duty in such 
condition, no " community,^^ no " riglit^'' no mutuality of any 
kind, no relation. 

To all these presumptions, as to what apostles could do, or 



52 THE BLOOD-UNITY OF THE EACE. 

could not do, we liave only to say : that is not the question, but 
what they did do, and the necessary inferences from their act- 
ual doings. As to Aristotle's doctrine, that friendship? could 
not exist between master and slave, his definition, embracing 
the requisites for it, renders his conclusion a necessity. It is 
very true that toward a mere thi7ig owned, toward the slave in 
that sense, there could not be j^AzY/^ ; yet toward him as a 
man, as having moral qualities and an emotional nature, though 
in the servile condition, there could be, and Aristotle knew 
there was, philia, friendship, and more than friendship. And 
so did apostles think. All their instructions imply that, whilst 
the master legally owned his slave, he yet could, and should, 
regard him as an object heloved for the Great Master's sake. 

Thus far had we written without consulting Aristotle, rely- 
ing on his pure intellect for the belief that we had given his 
real views. But on going to the Astor Library, (our own be- 
ino- boxed for removal,) and renewing our acquaintance with 
the old philosopher and metaphysician, we were gratified to find 
the case even stronger than had been supposed ; but we con- 
fess to a little surprise, on finding that, as in translating 
1 Tim. vi., 1, the Professor had added a word neither in the 
original nor in the version, so here he had unfortunately 
omitted just that part of the very passage quoted from Aris- 
totle, which is absolutely essential to its fair understanding, to 
the expression of the real view of the great philosopher. We 
quote him in full : " There is no friendship {philia) toward, or 
in relation to a slave, wherein or in as far as he is a slave, 
{doidos,) for there is no community, {koinon,) joint participation. 
In as far then as he is a slave, there is no friendship toward 
him, but (how important to tlie sense of the sentence !) in 
as far as he is a man, human, {anthropos,) there is also cer- 
tainly friendship to the extent of his humanity, {Tcath hoson 
anthropos i) for there seems to be a sort of 'mutuality of 
right ' {dihaion) with every man toward or in relation to every 
one capable of community {hoindnesai) in law and compact." 
He had said before : " Li as far as, or to the extent to which, 
there is joint participation, community, so far, to that extent, is 



THE BLOOD-UNITY OF THE EACE. 53 

there friendship, for there is also the right, justice, (dikaion,) 
' mutuality of right.' " 

From this passage it is luminously clear that Aristotle's idea 
was totally different from that of the Professor, and just as 
manifest that his idea was misapprehended and misrepresented. 
Aristotle had laid down to hoinon as the basis of friendship, 
the essential to dikaion^ right or justice. Equality was not 
essential to it, whilst humanity., community of nature, was. 
Hence a monarch could have Sijphilia friendship for his subject, 
a father for his child. A common nature, humanity was here, 
although equality was not. Hence no pTiilia toward an ani- 
mal, though pMlesis, fondness^ there could be. Kone toward 
a thing without life, animal life, apsitchos : none, for example, 
between the artisan and his tool. ISTone toward a slave, {dou- 
los,) in as far as he is a slave, for a slave, as such, is an animate 
instrument ; the instrument an inanimate slave. Yet regard- 
ed as a man, having a hoinon with his master in humanity, 
there could be for the slave a 'philia. All this makes it evi- 
dent how Aristotle viewed the slave as a chattel-personal, an 
instrument of his master for use, service, and yet jointly partak- 
ing with him of a humanity which brought him within the 
domain of the philia, or friendship. 

It is worthy of note, too, in passing, that Aristotle, in this 
same chapter, represents tyranny as the deflection from mon- 
archy, the bad form of that species of government, yet govern- 
ment still. But " in tyranny," he says, " there is no philia, 
friendship, or very little, nor justice, {dihaion^ nor hoinon, 
community." This, remember, is the so much lauded govern- 
ment, lordship, as distinguished from slavery, ownership, and 
yet in it there is no philia, the very negation which makes 
the Professor's hair stand on end, when he thinks of it as not 
belonging to the relation of slavery ! And Aristotle says yet 
more on this subject, right here. " In Persia the authority of 
the father is tyrannical, for he uses his sons as slaves. So is 
the authority of the despotes, the master. This, the latter, 
however, is right y that, the former, wrong, owing to the poM'cr 
of different circumstances." A tyrannical exercise of authority 



54 THE CHEISTIAN EELATION IN SLAVERY. 

by a master justifiable, right, dikaion, says Aristotle, but not 
by a father. 

To show that this gi'eatest of ancient philosophers did not 
hold the view attributed to him by the Professor, and impressed 
on his readers by the manner of his quotation, I take the liber- 
ty, here, of quoting somewhat from his Politics, Bk. I. — " So- 
ciety is not a mass, but a system, implying distinction of parts,^ 
with many moral and physical diiferences, relative and recipro- 
cal, the powers of one supplying the deficiencies of another." 
" To form a commonwealth from elements of equal value and 
dignity is absurd." "Forecast should guide improvidence, 
reason subject passion, and wisdom command folly." " Only 
those are incdienable rights, which one cannot exercise for an- 
other." " "What persons are presumed to have and yet cannot 
exercise, it is folly to call inalienable." " A perfect or com- 
plete family consists of slaves and free." " The parts of a 
family are master and slaves, husband and wife, parents and 
children." " By lavj one is a slave and another free ; but by 
nature there is no difi'erence." " A slave is relative to use, the 
possession and property of his master." " Slavery is founded 
both on utility sa\^ justice, {dikaion.)" " Tliere are two species 
of slavery, one founded in nature, the other in law. In the 
first, the master as fit to command as the slave to obey, their 
interests are mutual ; and this community of interests begets 
good-will." By the " community of interests " he means that 
it is equally for the good of the slave as of the master, that 
the latter should command and control, as the former obey. 
" The master has a right to command." And it must be con- 
ceded, he further says, " that the slave is capable of virtues," 
is not a mere tool. 

THE CHEISTIAK RELATION IN SLAVERY 

" Can there be a true Christian relation," asks Professor 
Lewis, in his last article, " between a man owned, and another 
man, who claims to be his owner?" We hesitate not to 
answer, Tes : especially as it is too evident to be controverted, 
that our blessed Lord, Paul and Peter, have answered it in the 



THE CHEISTIAN EELATION IN SLAVEEY. 55 

affirmative. Yon have only to read Clirist's interview with 
the centnrion, portions of Panl to the Corinthians, Ephesians, 
Colossians, to Timothy and Philemon, and of Peter's epistle, in 
order to feel it, as well as to see it. " The wayfaring man, though 
a fool, cannot err therein," and " he who rnnneth may read it." 
But the Professor answers his own question negatively, by at- 
taching to the term oioning the very acme of " the degradation 
of humanity, its deepest hurt, its irreconcilableness with the 
oneness of believers in Christ, its debasement of the Christian 
life, and the Christian love, its low, repulsive, mercenary, 
earthly feeling." Now, all this, as it seems to us, is as much 
to be proven, as that ownership negates the Christian relation. 
In other words, it is begging the question, by a round-about 
way of piling up huge and monstrous epithets on that poor 
little pedestal of three letters, oion. To bear so much, it should, 
at least, have been always written in capitals, OWIT. 

The distinction here made between the hired laborer and 
the slave, that the former has a " free will " and " room for all 
the moral relations," which the latter has not, is a distinction 
without a difference, a mere verbal logomachy. The free will, 
the absolute expressed choice or consent, is not essential to 
obligation on the one part, and right on the other. The rights 
and duties of parent and child depend on no freedom of loill, 
no exercise of choice on the part of the child, but grow out of 
a natural and constituted relation between the parties, origin- 
ating obhgations. The same is true of the rights of govern- 
ment and the duties of subjects, specially whilst yet minors. 
Yet in these and other cases, there is full play-room for the 
moral relations, as much as in the case of the pinched and 
poorly-paid hired servant. And so of the slave. He, in the 
relation he bears to his master, under law, has room for all the 
moral relations, and has as much/;'d6 will for the discharge of 
duty and the exercise of right as is either beneficial or desir- 
able. Free will must be put under restraint of some kind or it 
runs, much more naturally and forcefully, into evil than to good. 
So did it with our mother Eve and our father Adam, and so 
has it done ever since when left unbridled and licensed. Give 
it the reins and it drives humanity, Jehu-like, to ruin. All law 



56 THE CHEISTIAJS^ RELATION IN SLAVEEY. 

is restriction On free will ; all government also, whether pater- 
nal, monarchical, tyrannical or republican ; and one of the first 
inj mictions of Christianity is, obedience even to self-constituted 
_and hereditary Powers. Besides, it is a miserable free will, 
which chooses, under a necessity^ to be harnessed, in nudity 
(woman too !) to the little car in the dark, deep mines ! 

The Professor next undertakes to show that the golden rule 
of the gospel can have no application in the relations of slavery, 
whilst in those of the hired service it has " perfect application." 
And his assertion is based on the fact, that it contains " a 
would and a should., a desire and a condition." " Whatso- 
ever ye would that men should do : " " a mutual claim and a 
mutual right,^^ which " cannot exist between an owner and 
what is owned." " There is here no would and should, no 
mutual ought involving a mutual right, and furnishing the 
ground of a mutual lovey " The fact that the golden rule of 
love and obligation can have no place in this claim of servile 
ownership, shows that it lies out of the pale of Christianity." 

These quotations give the full view of the Professor on 
this point, and, although perhaps taking and antithetic, we do 
not appreciate them as argumentative or forceful. We con- 
cede that, in the Savior's golden rule, for which the world 
must ever bless Him, there is a would and a shoidd, the one 
expressing condition and obligation, the other desire : but we 
do not, in this concession, acce]")t his conclusions. According 
to his own analysis of the rule, the desire or wish of the one 
party, we think, must be limited to that which is right, that 
which the other party ought to do. It cannot, of course, em- 
brace every wanton or fanciful woidd or wish, but only such 
as you can rightfully feel, and the other would be bound, 
obligated to do. Your would must consist with his should. 
If men should do what you would they sliould, then you must 
do even so to them. Your obligation to do for others is not as 
extensive as might be your own wishes from others, but is re- 
lieved and regulated by the rectitude of your desires in regard 
to others. You must have a right, on j)rinciples of moral 
obligation, to demand of another, in the same circumstances, 
what you are bound to do for another. Now, the Professor 



THE CHRISTIAN RELATION IN SLAVERY. 57 

asserts that things cannot exist, where there is property in 
man, that slavery destroys free will, mutuality of claim, of 
right, of love. lie may, indeed, first convert a slave into an 
ass, a man into a brute, then thrust his convert down oiir 
throats, insist on his conception of slavery or ownership, and 
then deny to such Irute all moral powers, all sense of right and 
wrong, and then jump very easily to the conclusion, that be- 
tween him and an owning master there can be no mutual 
ougJit, no mutual right nor love ; and consequently, that " the 
golden rule," which implies responsible agents, " can have no 
place in this claim of servile ownership." This is not only 
fallacious reasoning, but it is equally in opposition to the ac- 
tion of the author of the rule. Did not Christ intend this 
golden maxim to apply to the relations he found existing in 
the Eoman empire and in the families of his own followers ? 
The question answers itself. 

Now suppose we reverse the process, and reason thus. 
Christ proclaimed this law of love and his Apostles carried it 
out in exhortations and precepts, just when and where there 
existed, in and out of the church, an oionership-slavery, worse 
in many features than that of our Southern States. But there 
is in this law of love, the golden rule, " a loould and a sliould^'' 
" an ought including a will and an obligation : there is a mu- 
tual claim and a mutual right." Then we are in a dilemma. 
Either Christ uttered his great law of social and Christian life 
knowing that it had " no application " to pervading relations 
of social life, or he announced it believing that, with its would 
and shoidd, its obligation and rights it had just as much appli- 
cation to these relations of " servile ownership," as to any 
other. We accept the latter, and deduce the conclusion, that 
" the golden rule of love and obligation can have place" here ; 
that slavery does not " lie out of the pale of Christianity, out 
of the kingdom of God," but in it ; and that there is not in it 
" a dead absorption of every moral idea." 

And then to talk as if in it there were " no ground of a 
mutual love ! " "Why the facts of the case are so opposite to 
this, as to offer the most triumphant overthrow of the state- 
ments which culminate in such a deduction. "Where, in any 



58 PEOPEKTY IN MAN. 

other system of miitnal dependence, any other system of service, 
not excepting the most gentle species of liired service ever ex- 
tant, do you find such manifestations of mutual love ? The 
very terms of address on both parts, the devotion of the slave 
to his master, his master's wife and children, and the tender re- 
turns of care and kindness on their part, have become pro- 
verbial, and cannot and do not exist where the free hired ser- 
vice prevails. If there is " no ground for this mutual lovej" 
this is a rare specimen of humanity, and we should be inclined 
to start a theory, not of semi-homo, semi-manhood, but of 
super-homo. But we abstain here from theories, intending to 
look at simple biblical facts. 

The Professor avers, very consistently we grant, that " the 
hirer has a moral claim, because a free will has promised it ; " 
but, in the other case, there can be no moral claim, because no 
free will, no voluntary contract. Then, fathers and mothers, 
beware that you do not too early listen to the Apostle's advice 
and exact obedience of your children. Beware, too, of the 
wisdom of Solomon, in this regard ! Conscripts under the 
" dignity of power," rebel, desert your standards, rush into 
anarchy. There is " no moral claim," because " no free will 
of yours has promised the service ! " 

PROPEFwTY IN MAN. (LEWIS AND HODGE.) 

In article seventh, Professor Lewis reverts to the old idea 
of property in man, or ownership, on which he had already 
dwelt at such length, in his primary articles. Kow, mainly 
for the purpose of controverting and converting Dr. Hodge of 
Princeton, known and read of all men. In the latter hope, we 
presume, he is doomed to fail, as in the former, we think him 
utterly unsuccessful. The definition of Dr. Hodge is that 
" when one man is called the property of another, it can only 
mean that the one has the right to tise the services of another.''^ 
This Dr. Lewis disputes, and pronounces a " sophism," substi- 
tuting his own definition as the indisputable truth, to wit : 
" Property in anything is simply property in the iise or uses 
that may he made of that tliingP " To complete the idea, 



PKOPEETY IN MAN. 59 

there must be nothing in the thing owned, which, as will, can 
oppose the will of the owner in the free use of it ; nor any thing 
from without, which hinders its vendibility." " No room left 
for the distinction between ownership of a man, and that of a 
horse." " The one is a right to get all the uses possible out of 
a man ; the other, to get all the possible uses out of an animal." 
" The owner of a man has a right to the use of his will and of 
his Christianity," 

What Dr. Hodge will say to all this we know not, but for 
ourselves we have to say, that there seems in it more of 
" sophism " than in the accepted definition of the Doctor. Yery 
much of j)roperty is made so, becomes so, only by law, and the 
law may distinctly define the attributes of the property, we 
think, or leave them to be inferred from the nature of the case, 
the qualities and capacities of the thing owned. If the law, 
then, make a man property, it is competent, also, to define the 
natui-e of the property, and to restrict it to the services of the 
man, excluding the right to own his Christianity and his will. 
Or it can leave that to be determined by the nature and rela- 
tions of the property. In this case man could not, by common 
consent nor common sense, become nor be considered property 
in the same sense with a horse or an ox or a farm. It is 
" Christianly and humanly inconceivable," to use one of the 
Professor's phrases. 

But to the Professor's own definition. "Wherein does it 
difl:er, really, from Dr. Hodge's ? The one is " right to sei'- 
vices; " the other " property in the uses to be made of a thing," 
or, as it should be, right to these uses. And, in fact, he him- 
self considers them synonyms, immediately interpreting his 
definition thus : " Property in a horse is the right to use the aui- 
mal as a horse, for the service a horse can do." There is 
sophism, here, in the Professor's use of the little word may in 
his definition quoted above, as he thinks there is in Dr. Hodge's 
use of only in his definition. He surely would not contend 
that property imiDlies right to all possible uses of the thing 
owned. If not, to what uses, then, in case of a man, other 
than those implied, included in services ? "Will he say that 
property, proprium, of necessity gives right to use a horse so 



60 PEOPERTY EST MAN". 

as to abuse liim, to violate his nature, to put liim to uses not 
conformable to bis being, however possible they might be ? 
Much less can he rationally contend that property in man, in- 
telligent man, necessarily gives right to use him as if he were 
not more than a brute, not possessed of a soul. Tims, whether 
you regard this property as founded in nature or constituted 
by law, you must limit your ideas of the property by the qual- 
ities of the object. Because you own the soil and may there- 
fore plough it, it does not follow that you may plough the back 
of the slave, because you own him. If you own a bull, and 
may therefore chain him to his stall or use him purposely for 
the generation of his kind, it does not follow, from your own- 
ing a man, that you have a right to do the same things with 
him. There is no pretence, nor could there be any, that prop- 
erty in man includes the ownership of his soul, as the Profes- 
sor contends. It is just ridiculous, and grows not out of any 
just definition of property ever before given ; and we think 
neither the philosophic nor legal world will accept his own. It 
will probably remain his property, no one wishing ever to buy 
it, much less to claim it. 

"We do not confound " hired labor " with slave labor, and 
reason from one to the other, as some do. It is often more bit- 
ter, and is an abject slavery, yet is it not exactly compulsory. 
The man may choose to die rather than submit to it, but he is 
free, in a sense, to accept or reject the terms. Yet is this con- 
ceded distinction no proof that the one is right, the other 
wrong. Liberty to do as you choose, freedom from subjection 
to another, is not a necessity of manhood, nor always its right. 
We know it is said : " Man has a right to liberty." "What right ? 
Where did ho get it ? A. right by his own nature ? Doubted. 
A right given him of God, his Maker ? Where ? Let us not 
so hastily give ourselves up to dogmas, which may have no 
foundation in Scripture, but much in infidelity, and mere an- 
thropology. 

And now, on " the practical questions, as they would style 
them," he quotes from a sermon by Rev. ISTeal Cleavland, which 
we have not seen, as stating those questions well. " Does this 
relation contradict the laws of love ? " " Does it hinder a de- 



PEOPEETY IN MAN. 61 

sire after tlie spiritual and temporal welfare of servants ? " 
" What hinders to teach them the truths of the Gospel ? " And 
Professor Lewis answers this by simply remarking that pages 
of just such questions could be asked, and adding : " Why, 
nothing hinders, if you treat the man as your dependent and 
benefactor," as Mr. C. had described the slave. " But this hin- 
ders, this claim of ownership, which is of the essence of mod- 
ern slavery." " When it becomes supreme, it utterly extin- 
guishes all Christian love." " Ownership is essential worldli- 
ness ; tliere can be no deeper worldliness." " There is no other 
ownership than to own for worldly gain." Kemember, oivner- 
ship alone is the evil, in the Professor's view. Not so thought 
Christ and apostles. Yet the Professor pronounces Mr. C. 
Q'lght in calling the slave the " benefactor " of his master. 
If so, then, according to Aristotle, he is capable of the higher 
friendship. 

Tlie fallacy and fault of the Professor's statements are 
transparent, and seem to become translucent at least to him- 
self. For he immediately devotes a large part of a column in 
telling us, (after having settled and sealed it that ownership 
is the essence, the virus of slavery,) that, " if the idea of owner- 
ship is discarded, except as under law, then we have no quar- 
rel with them." Then tliere is no quarrel with a legalized 
oivnership, a slavery which rests on law, and discards ex- 
traneous evils. This is a frank surrender of his stronghold, 
his Fort Sumter. After a terrible struggle, he at last evacu- 
ates. Pie gives up the gist, and the half in length, of his 
whole argument, that ownership, property in man, is the damn- 
ing idea in slavery. This is very much like Lewis versus 
Lewis, even in the same treatise. 

But still, he rises again from his suicidal fall, and springs 
upon the old game. Such an idea of slavery, he contends, 
does not exist, and cannot exist. It is essentially mercenary, 
low, selfish ; and to prove it, he quotes again from a sermon 
of " the Rev. James Smylie, of Amity Presbytery," who con- 
tends that buying, selling, holding a slave for gain, is not sin. 
And, as if this doctrine were to be maintained on the basis of 
the golden rule, or, at least, as consistent with it, he once more 



62 PEOPERTY m MAN. 

reverts to this law of love, and gives ns, definitively, his inter- 
pretation of it, and pronounces it an emphatic " precept against 
slavery." His interpretation is : " Whatsoever ye may rightly 
wish that men should do, etc. ; " and he thinks " there is implied 
in it an unchanging equality, that exists among all true human 
relations," and asserts, as conformable to this, that " all men 
have an equal right to life and liberty." In this he difi'ers 
again from the " Pure Intellect," the great Stagyrite. 

But it is apparent to every reflecting mind, that the ques- 
tion is only shoved a step further back : What may one rightly 
wish ? May the slave rightly wish his liberty ? Aristotle 
would answer, No. We, however, accept the Bible, and not 
Aristotle, as our guide in this matter ; and although the Pro- 
fessor, by the ruling he so often applies to Mr. Van Dyke, 
might be held to the literal precept, we are ready to grant the 
essential rectitude of his rendering, agreeing as it does, with 
that of Chalmers, and others of the best commentators. Then, 
of course, it is to be determined whether or not the slave may 
rightly, or whether or not he ought to, desire his liberty. This 
necessarily opens up again the whole subject for discussion, 
and the answer, if right, must be founded on the Word of 
God. It seems, also to us, a pertinent question : Does it follow 
that, because one party, in a certain relation to another, has 
abstractly, or in some sense, a riglit to wish a thing, the other 
party is bound to grant it % A child might, in some sense, 
rightly wish for something, and yet the parent not be bound, 
all things considered, to grant it. A criminal, a prisoner might, 
in certain regards, rightly wish exemption from chains, and 
yet it might not be the duty of the State, all things considered, 
to grant the wish. In both these cases, as in others, the wish 
might be right, in view only of the nature, the sensibilities and 
affections of the child or criminal, yet, in view of other consid- 
erations, wider and higher, the duty to grant the wish would 
not follow. 

But, finally, to assure himself and others, that a Christian 
man cannot hold a fellow-man, much less a fellow-Cliristian, as 
property, he inquires : Who is the Christian man ? We accept 
every word of his Scriptural answer to this question. lie is 



PKOPEETY EST MAN. 



63 



« a pilgrim," " a seeker of a better country," " a sojourner," 

" seeking a city wliicli liath foundations," " one wlio felt that 

tlie fasHon of tlie world was passing away," " who souglit not 

his own," " whose citizenship was in heaven," " looking for a 

crown of glory," one who " loved others as he loved himself, 

even better," " a friend of Christ," " a brother beloved," "one 

who regards the poor, and gives him a high place, higher than 

the rich " And we add, one whose " affection was set on 

things above, and not on things on the earth," who felt that, 

" though the outward man perish, the inward is renewed day 

by day; for the light affliction, which is but for a moment, 

worketh out a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory 

whilst we look not at the things seen, but at the thmgs not 

seen ; for the things seen are temporal, but the thmgs not seen, 

^^'"^Thisis iust that "interior spirit" of the entire Bible, of 
which we have already spoken, and which made it of smal 
account to Christ or his apostles to dwell on the mere temporal 
relations of life ; of little moment to the slave to pant after a 
legal, political liberty, if so be he were the freedman of Chiist , 
which led Paul to tell him, if he became a Christian, bemg a 
slave, not to care much for that, but to abide patiently and 
Chri tianly in his calling, and which authorized the master to 
say • " Let the dead bury their dead :" there are higher mterests 
than those even of the tenderest family relations 

We may, in other issues, take up some related subjects, and 
should like much, even in this, to draw a comparison between 
the exercises of governmental and of slave power ; biit as our 

010X0 now I to reply to the articles of Professor Lewis as 
btfly as possible, we Abstain from further discussion and en- 
Hr'ement: and leave what we have ^vl^itten m the hands of 
H m who is the source of all truth, that He may give it its 
Seleffect. If there is error, our prayer is tha we may see 

it ; if truth, that we and others may be established m it. 



THE END. 



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